585: AI social contracts, post woke leftism, and agentic conciousness
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Konnichi-wa from 5 quick days in Tokyo for a dear friends wedding. Definitely the farthest, and shortest foreign trip I’ve ever taken!
I finally watched The Substance movie (on a plane) after pushing it off many hours on planes to try and watch with friends IRL. This is the scariest horror movie ever because the true monster is aging and it’s already coming for us all. I looked away and fast forwarded dozens of times during the gory bits. :D
Aesthetics from the green substance itself to the sexy phone voice guy to the banger cinematography all around *chefs kiss*
How Sue only stole from Liz and not vice versa because we all make unhealthy decisions in our youths that only we pay for in older age
How goddamn French and feminist it is in a sexy elephant in the room way. Only a French woman could have made this movie, and indeed one did.
Speaking of, it was entirely shot on French soundstages, not in LA at all :O
I also watched The Heat movie from 1995, with De Niro and Pacino facing off in a moody cops vs robbers action flick that stands apart due to strong female characters, violence with consequences, a slow burn with big payoffs, and outstanding set pieces.
Apparently the climactic downtown bank robbery is so iconic that it inspired several real bank robberies in the 90s, and even one Christopher Nolan in the opening scene of The Dark Knight. I love finding upstream watershed media like this that shaped my world.
Technology
Berlin House (so named due to the creativity that blossomed when the Berlin wall fall and central housing was cheap and plentiful) is a new coworking space/accelerator in downtown SF that has my futurist friends buzzing. I hope to visit soon.
AGI Social Contract is a site and community devoted to figuring out how society can adapt to a post General AI world where jobs become scarce and the social contract must be rewritten. I’m excited to dive in deeper.
Ideologies
Fractal is a coliving community in NYC I love. They put together a list of resources to help you start your own ‘live near friends’ community, and it’s a banger. Great supplement to the Supernuclear blog (linked there).
Richard Bartlett was a staunch leftist, but no longer identifies with the mainstream movement, and waxes poetic here about how to move beyond ‘wokeness’ in progressive, not reactionary way. I’m listening - there’s a healthy woke that’s aware and an unhealthy woke that’s reactionary and we all know the difference by now.
Memes
Richard also shared this fire meme that’s been living rent free in my head the last week after one viewing. In my 20s I needed to save the world and now I’d rather be a good friend, neighbor, and father (soon).
While we’re on twitter, this graph making the rounds about consciousness vs agency, and Scott Britton’s comments on it, is thought provoking. I know folks in every quadrant
