1. What we should collectively care about the most
1.1. Solving the AI control problem (ensuring the safety of artificial superintelligence and preventing a big power artificial intelligence arms race).
1.2. Longevity research (defeating aging).[1]
1.3. Accelerating space colonization.[2]
1.4. Making the world resilient against natural pandemics and especially bioterror attacks.
1.5. Preventing nuclear war: avoiding another nuclear arms race and the implementation of hypersonic delivery systems.
1.6. Subsidizing and building a massive amount of next-generation nuclear power plants, improving uranium seawater extraction, and creating next-generation geothermal energy all around the world.
1.7. Preventing a population collapse by e.g. researching artificial wombs and eventually populating the Earth with 10 quadrillion (10^16) people.[3][4]
1.8. Making our increasingly globalized/interconnected world resilient against disruptions (cyber-attacks; solar storms; etc.).
1.9. Preventing the total loss of privacy due to a combination of increasingly potent machine learning and cheap sensors.
1.10. Tackling the rise of China and ensuring the continuance of Pax Americana.
1.11. Geoengineering research.
1.12. Researching a way to mass-produce [underground] vertical farms [powered by geothermal energy] and designing genetically engineered crops optimized for such an environment.
2. Science
2.1. Genes are destiny.
2.2. The greatest privilege in life is a high IQ.[5]
2.3. Our technological civilization wouldn't have been possible without the contributions of a very small number of geniuses.
2.4. It is probable that there exist genetically determined differences in intelligence or behavior between human populations.[6]
2.5. There are significant and genetically determined physical and behavioral differences between men and women.[7]
2.6. Pornography does not increase offending and might actually decrease the number of sexual assaults.[8]
2.7. Violent video games don’t cause violence and might actually decrease it.
2.8. Sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed.
2.9. Glyphosate is safe.
2.10. Vaccines are generally safe.
2.11. GM crops are safe.
2.12. Nuclear power is safe.
2.13. Radioactive waste could be safely dumped into the ocean.
2.14. Climate change is in large part caused by human activities but the probability that it is an existential risk is less than 1%.
3. Politics and Society
3.1. That America lost the Vietnam war was a disaster for Vietnam and the whole world.[9]
3.2. Normal Olympics should be discontinued in favor of trans-Olympics that allow all use of drugs and genetic engineering.
3.3. Eugenics (embryo selection/editing etc.) could help us in creating a just world by reducing cognitive inequality.[10]
3.4. Most Muslims in the Western world are significantly more illiberal than most right-wing voters.
3.5. Risks associated with the radical right are massively exaggerated while risks associated with the radical identitarian left are massively understated.
3.6. “Open Borders” is a moronic and very dangerous ivory tower policy.[11]
3.7. Israel is a bastion of liberalism in a sea of barbarism and a bulwark against the forces that seek to destroy us.
3.8. Unfettered capitalism has a better chance at achieving utopia than any other system.
3.9. Bioethicists are a net negative for humanity.
3.10. Fuck polar bears. Fuck corals. Fuck glaciers. Growth is more important. Utopia needs energy. Everything else can be simulated.[12]
3.11. The way the regressive left tries to solve problems is disastrous for society. The policies they seek to implement are MUCH worse than the problems they attempt to solve. I believe that most of humanity’s problems have technological solutions that do not require the use of coercion or social engineering.[13]
Footnotes:
[1] The economic value of targeting aging: “We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00080-0
[2] Space colonization forces us to invent a lot of other technologies that are generally very useful. For example 1. carbon capture technology 2. fusion power 3. radiation shielding 4. crops that can grow under very rough environmental conditions...I could go on.
The ability to colonize space will make our civilization much more resilient. If we can survive on Mars then we can also survive supervolcanoes, nuclear wars, and other similar disasters.
Last but not least, it will also give us access to a huge amount of resources through asteroid mining while simultaneously giving us the ability to deflect dangerous asteroids and comets.
[3] Our technological civilization wouldn't have been possible without the contributions of a very small number of geniuses like Newton, Einstein, or Turing. And to survive, we need to increase the number of geniuses in order to solve the many existential challenges ahead of us. The only way to do so right now is to increase the global population.
[4] No, Earth is not running out of resources. — “[W]ithout violating the known laws of physics or inventing anything fundamentally new", "[y]ou can fairly easily fit 10 quadrillion (10¹⁶) people on Earth, all living pretty luxurious lives...”
[5] High IQ matters more than anything else:
- When Lightning Strikes Twice: Profoundly Gifted, Profoundly Accomplished: “In a sample of 259 extremely high IQ adolescents (0.01%), 37% had doctorates, 9% had patents, 39% had peer-reviewed publications, along with various other accomplishments.” https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Article-PS-Makel-et-al-2016-II.pdf
- Study tracks 1,650 mathematically gifted children over 4 decades: 4.1% earned tenure at major universities; 2.3% were top executives at major companies; 2.4% top attorneys; authored 85 books; 7572 articles; 681 patents; secured $358m in grants. https://gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2014-lubinski.pdf
- Higher IQ gives hugely increasing benefits, all the way up the scale. https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-my/wp-content/uploads/sites/826/2013/02/05123527/Article-GCQ-Lubinski-Benbow-2020.pdf
- “In the extreme right tail of the talent distribution, small differences in talent are associated with sizeable differences in long-term achievements, including getting a PhD, number of mathematics publications and cites, and being awarded a Fields medal.” https://voxeu.org/article/invisible-geniuses-advancement-knowledge-frontier
- Individuals who scored in the top 1% of the Math SAT at age 13 were followed up 25+ years later. Performance on the Math SAT had predictive validity even within the top 1% of scores https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1105/167599ed8a1fe800f1039a858073fe7e7edb.pdf
- Cognitive ability of top 5% more important for country wealth than mean cognitive ability. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51093079_Cognitive_Capitalism_The_Effect_of_Cognitive_Ability_on_Wealth_as_Mediated_Through_Scientific_Achievement_and_Economic_Freedom
- High IQ provides a significant advantage in science. https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html
- Higher IQ at age 11 predicts lower mortality 68 years later from all major causes of death (N = 65,765). https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2708
[6] Some statistics on the stratospheric achievements and average verbal IQ of Ashkenazi Jews by Mats Vinnaren (@MatsVinnaren):
Let's begin with #NobelPrice
(%s to be compared to the Jewish % (=~0,2 %) of total world population)
Nobel Laureates:
Chemistry: 19%; 29% of US total
Economics: 40%; 50% of US
Literature: 14%; 38% of US
Peace: 8%; 10% of US
Physics: 26%; 39% of US
Physiology or Medicine: 26%; 38% of US
Wolf Price:
Chemistry: 40%
Physics: 42%
Medicine: 41%
Mathematics: 38%
Chemistry:
Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry: 23%
Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry: 29%
Physics:
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics: 38%
Enrico Fermi Award: 53%
Mathematics:
Fields Medalists: 25%
Abel Prize: 32%
Medical & Life Sciences:
Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research: 32%
Gairdner Foundation Awards: 24%
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize: 42%
Albany Medical Center Prize: 44%
GM Cancer Research Foundation Sloan Prize: 38%
Creators of History's Greatest Lifesaving Medical & Scientific Advances: Estimated 2.8 billion lives saved (50% of the estimated total of about 5.6 billion lives saved by all 105 individuals listed)
Computer and Information Science:
ACM A.M. Turing Award in Computer Science: 31%
IEEE C.E. Shannon Award in Information Theory: 35%
Economics:
John Bates Clark Medal in Economics: 52%
Chess:
World Chess Champions: 44%
Ranked Among the 64 Strongest Chess Players of All Time: 45%
Philosophy:
250 Most Frequently Cited Authors in the Arts & Humanities: 22%
Twenty-Seven "Most Important" Philosophical Works of the Twentieth Century: 37% of works
Among the Fifty Most Frequently Cited Twentieth Century Works in the Arts & Humanities: 44% of works
Psychology:
"The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century": 40%
Pulitzer Price:
Fiction: 14%
Poetry: 18%
Non-Fiction: 53%
Drama: 34%
Literature:
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay: 40%
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay: 34%
Antoinette Perry Award for Best Play: 39%
Antoinette Perry Award for Best Book of a Musical: 54%
[7] There are hundreds of studies proving this. But it should be common sense that millions of years of sexual selection made men and women diverge both physically and psychologically.
[8] There is lots of evidence for this. For example, this meta-analysis finds no good evidence that pornography is linked to sexual aggression. Better studies find less evidence for a link; population studies suggest increased availability of pornography is associated with reduced sexual aggression.
Men who are avid consumers of pornography are no more sexist or misogynistic than the general public. In fact, pornography users hold more gender-egalitarian views.
[9] It's wrong to think that the United States lost the Vietnam war. Humanity lost it.
Vietnam had a similar potential as South Korea, Japan, or Germany. Without communism, we would now likely buy Vietnamese cars and smartphones.
Winning that war would have been worth it.
And now consider what a united Korea could have achieved. Or look at Taiwan or Singapore and imagine the vast amount of value a China led by someone like Lee Kuan Yew could have generated.
America shouldn't have stopped in Berlin and Tokyo. America and its allies should have taken the opportunity to occupy Moscow and Chongqing. The world could now be fantastically more advanced.
[10] If your parents would have had access to advance reproductive and gene-editing technologies then you and I might not exist. A smarter, more healthy person, with better opportunities, would exist in our place. This person isn't bothered by their nonexistence. Neither would we be.
The knee-jerk reaction to eugenics is to conjure the specter of fascism. Ironically, the same people want to take away your liberty to decide which traits your children should have and make you accept whatever fate the uncaring forces of nature have in store for them.
We need to wrest control of our genetic destiny from the uncaring claws of nature and shape our future according to our values.
If eugenics was subsidized and adopted widely it would eventually deal a death blow to any form of racism because any population differences, real or imaginary, will be seen as solely aesthetic and voluntary.
[11] Open borders can destroy a country in a multitude of ways: ethnic tensions; replacement of a functional culture with a dysfunctional; eroding the quality of and trust into institutions such a the police; crime; parallel societies; dysgenics; collapse of the welfare system; .…
[12] I wish I would have been born in a time when the full effects of climate change become noticeable. It will be a world without disease and disability. A world of immeasurable wealth. An infinite metaverse of possibilities.
Why would I care about a heatwave while I discover things in my virtual reality, cooled by fusion energy, that no living person can even imagine?
A medieval king would have given up his entire kingdom for access to contemporary medicine, supermarkets, and Netflix. A hundred years from now, even the poorest of the poor will be able to have more fun than a billionaire of today.
[13] It might surprise you to learn that I have, in principle, no problem with a lot of what's cherished on the political left.
I support veganism. I have no problem with transsexuality. Indeed, as a transhumanist I believe into bodily autonomy, including abortion. I think climate change should be taken seriously. And I just got vaccinated a third time.
The BIG difference between me and the regressive left is that my approach to these topics is technological in nature and free of coercion:
- I don't want to prevent people from eating meat by making it expensive or socially taboo. I want veganism to win by creating artificial meat alternatives that are cheaper and on a molecular level indistinguishable from real meat.
- I don't want to dismantle capitalism in order to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. I want to build next-generation nuclear power and geothermal energy plants all around the world so that the economy can continue to grow and lift everyone out of poverty.
- I am against compulsory vaccination. I want to remove bureaucratic hurdles and build the ability to quickly deploy variant-specific boosters and approve drugs that prevent hospitalization and death so that those willing to take them can protect themselves.
- I don't want to undermine language and biology in order to make a small group of people feel a little bit better. I want to make sex reassignment therapies so cheap, easy, and perfect that third parties will be unable to tell what sex someone had at birth.
Social engineering and coercion is a terribly ineffective and divisive approach to any of these topics. And that is why I believe it to be necessary to oppose the regressive left. Their approach is antimeritocratic, dysgenic, and dysfunctional.
Here are some examples of how the regressive left tries to solve problems:
1. Opposition to standardized testing; diversity quotas (antimeritocratic).
2. Blank slatism; unrestricted mass immigration; creating a positive correlation between the social standing someone has and how much of a victim they are (dysgenic).
3. Defunding and restraining the police; dismantling capitalism to save the environment; demanding absurd standards such as equity that require the forcible expropriation of wealth (dysfunctional).
All of these policies are disastrous for society. Their effects are MUCH worse than the problems they attempt to solve.
So when activists try to gaslight society with terms like 'birthing person' and make the use of "wrong" pronouns a hate crime then I will oppose and ridicule them in the same way that I oppose and ridicule the extremists working for PETA, even though I am myself a vegetarian who cares about animal rights. I am not in fundamental opposition to these causes; I am in fundamental opposition to the way the regressive left approaches these causes.
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I found this in a link shared by someone in Aella's Twitter, and I had mild deja vu, because I could have written that verbatim haha.
Oh well, great minds think alike and fools seldom differ! Either way, that warrants a follow.
A big part of unfettered capitalism (we agree in its likeliest results) is open borders though. It's free trade in all terms, including labor. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=open+borders&crid=3SKXJYLEE22YE&sprefix=open+border%2Caps%2C188&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 Bryan Caplan (economist of the wildly free markets bent) would probably do a better job alleviating your concerns than I would. Whatever asterisks you want to add is fine, sign the agreement that says 13 years with no welfare or entitlements, disease screening and interpol/FBI lists check for the most serious of criminals, yadda yadda, if you think the concerns are significant. Compared to the windfall they can't be though, and I'm not sure if we can afford -not- to implement some sort of "default answer is yes" system soon. Demographics are a bitch and we could have a real widowmaker of a crises brewing that we are artificially worsening.