The Anti Puritan
Friday, July 3, 2026
Killing is the whole point
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Children of machine
The next hundred years are going to be defined by declining populations and low birth rates. Just as the past was defined by population growth, the future will be defined by population collapse. Things are going to snap back hard. Will humans finally learn to control the forces that control us? To master our own technology? Probably not.
Whatever happens, three worlds will emerge and inhabit the same Earth: the Luddites, the transhumanists, and the patriarchs. Each will be a response to collapsing birth rates.
The Luddites will take the Amish approach. They will turn against technology and birth control itself. If they also turn against reproductive technology, their approach has a chance of working.
The transhumanists will build artificial womb technology so they can continue to live their hedonistic liberal lifestyle. In the beginning, it may empower them; in the end, it may only empower corporations and governments. Governments already have the power of death. Soon they may also have the power of life.
The patriarchs are the term I give to Catholic traditionalists, the Taliban, the Islamic State, and any other hybrid religious, fanatical, male-dominated order. They will seek to raise birth rates through the oppression of women.
It's all going to be shit, and I'm not sure I even want to be here when it happens. Maybe Skynet will kill us all. Maybe God will have mercy on us. No matter which approach wins, humanity loses.
Brain organoid computation is becoming a reality, and if the economics work in its favor, the most valuable asset a human has might be the gray matter between their ears.
There are two parallel trends happening here. One is the collapse of humanity, and the other is the ascent of artificial intelligence. If the ascent is real, then the collapse becomes kind of irrelevant.
There are two futures: one where AI takes over and another where it does not. Within the category where AI does not take over are the three approaches to dealing with birth-rate collapse. Since reality is messy, something tells me that all four possible futures will exist simultaneously, living together and at war with one another.
Humans are incapable of fighting a force unless it wears a face. If artificial superintelligence exists, then a real face will be put on technology, giving humanity the ability to fight it—to finally control the technological forces we have unleashed that now control us.
That assumes, of course, that we have a chance of winning.
Even if we don't fight the AI, the mere presence of a superintelligence may cause humans to finally treat technology as something worthy of being controlled. There is a possible future where humanity lives side by side with AI and masters the technology that controls us. I mean all the other technology: birth control, screens, the internet, and so on.
Then there are the various horrific alternatives.
Control the forces that control you, or live like rats in the shadow of the machine.
Friday, June 12, 2026
Schism elections
Monday, June 8, 2026
The cognitive horizon and the chain of causality
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Again I say control the forces that control you
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Don't rely on trends
Monday, April 6, 2026
Molasses heralds authoritarianism
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Summary of political design arguments
Friday, April 3, 2026
The antimemetics of politics
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Protect your desalinization plant with this one weird trick
Monday, March 30, 2026
AI potential, billions wasted
Slopbot Silicon Valley tech execs keep chasing the Holy Grail of general intelligence while the best use cases are narrow off-the-shelf AI products, running lean on your own machine using software as a service or even just old fashioned CD software product.
A profitable use case for AI is like:
A customer service bot that runs on your own local machine. You can configure all of it and let it query your inventory to tell customers whether something is in-stock. You can program in thousands of frequently asked questions, let customers look up order status, find tracking numbers, hours of operation, account information etc. It's a sophisticated chatbot that does everything a customer service worker does.
The best way to implement this sort of thing is probably to set up a camera and record what actual workers do at their desks, then use that data to program the AI.
These use cases wind up being extremely specific: tax accountants, customer service workers, call center employees, purchasing agents, travel agents, match makers, consultants, research assistance, business process analysts, intelligence, and so forth. You do this by literally watching the employee work and then making the bot do the same thing.
They will continue to piss away billions until the jig is up and retail investors are left holding the bag, which point the industry may actually pivot to something useful. Making people's jobs obsolete is a specific process on a job-by-job basis where you watch and mimic. True off-the-shelf products come after an exhausting process of watching thousands of professionals work their jobs. Eventually the bots are talking to each other, negotiating prices, haggling, booking travel, finding matches, and streamlining the whole process. AGI is going to require this huge on ramp of real world experience.