"The demon of vainglory transforms himself into an angel of light... He shows us visions of lights, shapes, and dramatic configurations, and whispers that we have attained a high degree of holiness. Reject every such light and form with humility, for Christ does not manifest Himself in visual traps." The Ladder St John Climacus (6th century)

Fable 5.5 probably definitely tomorrow. Rumors: - Better at reasoning and intuition - Infers intent rather than taking instructions literally - More ambitious. Ask it to fix a bug and it fixes the deeper root cause - Does creative, “out-of-the-box” thinking - Can invent algos to predict stocks - Bestows complete and eternal enlightenment on first response AND I’d bet it has major efficiency gains like Opus 5.5. Icing on the cake would be usage for all subs. Prepare yourself in mind, body and spirit.

The era when "sharp thinking" about "something interesting" were enough is ending people who went all in on these skills are stumbling in a post apocalyptic daze in the general direction of where they seem to recall their "house" is vaguely hoping it's still standing and offers at least enough of a refuge to recover basic perception on second thought maybe the move is to pull the covers over your head and go all in on someone benign waking them up after a nap for the ages Technology is invalidating secular control systems one after the next. People shocked or confused by this phenomenon and its mechanics are being gigafried Our hearts must ache, they do need rest and recovery. Of the sort secular control systems can't provide

These last six months feel like some kind of breathless void in the discourse. Most of the sharpest thinkers I know of appear to be on some kind of hiatus, or are depressed, or took a job somewhere, or are doing some kind of religious hermetic thing. Many are "going through the motions" and privately admit they are losing their direction. If you look at each person's life trajectory and whatever appears to have diminished their output as writers, artists, thinkers and so on, it all seems just personal on the surface: but I suspect it may actually be a broader kind of 'exhaustion'. Their personal difficulties in their work seem only to be manifestations of a much wider cultural exhaustion. We appear to be in a transitional era that goes on forever. Many have attempted to keep track of or to influence the general direction that culture is going in, and appeared to be doing so fairly well for a while. But by now, everyone who has attempted that task has been humbled deeply by a series of vague and inscrutable cultural shifts that have snuck in with quiet haste. The result has been total discombobulation and a wearying sense of empty instability. Nobody knows what is next, and nobody appears to be in a strong position to shape what comes next either. Our compasses are failing us. Meanwhile the publishing industry continues its spectacular death, reading itself is collapsing, and even the anthropological realities of what it means to be human are now in question. We've felt the "something's gotta give" feeling for so long that we are now numb, and any attempt at saying what will or could or might "give" now feels pointless. Building niche sideline underground IRL projects feels extraordinarily distant. Deep traditional religion appeals, but its logical endpoint is for each of us to shut up, withdraw, and embrace a life of silent devotion. And above all -- spectacle is now boring, redundant; the wider culture is tired of LOOKING and clicking and subscribing and so on. Writers are tired of marching to the 24/7 tempo of that environment as well. Burnout is the chief export of this system -- for author and reader alike. Whatever this is, it's clear to me that an era has very quietly ended and that whatever's "next" may not come at all, at least not for a long time yet.

Peter Thiel says Anthropic grew out of something "almost cult-like," and asks whether a cult has ever built a company worth close to $2 trillion “And then there were, of course, parts of it that were, I don’t know, crazy and almost cult-like. But it had maybe the good dimension of a cult where there was one big thing they knew that the other people did not. And I think even though there are ways I’d like to be very critical of them today, there were ways they got that one big thing right.” “And then has a cult ever started a company as successful as Anthropic? You know, I don’t know what the most success, I mean, like even a billion dollar company seems like bigger than a crazed cult could build. So if you have a cult that’s built a company that’s worth probably close to two trillion at the IPO, it would probably be the, I don’t know, sixth, seventh largest company by market cap in the world built in like six, seven years. Has a cult ever done something like that? So, yes.” “So I want to be critical of them. And they’re things I’m uncomfortable and critical about. But the first thing I would try to do is always, you always want to steel man your opponents. You want to try to, you know, try to understand them as well as they understand themselves or even make their arguments better. And the way I would steel man the effective altruists is, first off, they got one enormously big thing right.”

BREAKING: The head of the army says the UK's political leaders are about to start a "frank conversation" with the public about the need to prepare for war, per Sky News. General Sir Roly Walker said every citizen will be asked to make sacrifices and to play their part in the defence of the nation.

Palmer Luckey: “The U.S. and China will be like their own universes… and everybody else will be renting pieces of them.” 🇺🇸🇨🇳 “The U.S. and China will be in different worlds… almost like their own universes… and everybody else will be renting pieces of them. I think that’s pretty likely. There are a lot of people who look at a working-class American who’s against taxation and regulation and say, ‘Why is he voting against his own self-interest?’ But a lot of them understand something that the supposed elites do not: that regulatory climate, the one that allows for massive American dominance in technology, manufacturing, and productivity, is what makes America what it is. There are Americans who fundamentally understand that allowing innovation to happen is good for them. They understand that rockets going into space will make their lives better, even if it’s not directly. There are hungry people who would rather see a billion dollars go toward that than a food stamp program that would put extra food in their pantry. I don’t think you see that much in other countries.” We’re not far off from reaching a global oligopolistic type universe … where the two dominant powers control all essential outputs and everyone else is essentially renting space. Nations, countries, continents, all moving away from meaningful productivity growth, and becoming far too reliant on outdated economic metrics. Aggregate growth should be dependent on real output and not solely on fiscal spending and labor participation rates. We live in a world of slowing birth rates.

i felt that primetime, digger, and you can see everything all pretty interestingly engage with a common theme -- we desire lolcows, and the rippling effects this has across Everything the question of 'truth' is tied up with this in all three of these movies

Anthropic RSP slides circa mid 2023 Faith for the machine god

Digger is a political movie that condemns the idea that watching political movies is activism. You Can See Everything is a documentary that condemns the idea that documentaries can be trusted. Incredible month for movies.

Nathan Fielder has pioneered a form of art that, more than any other cinema that's come out, feels utterly contemporary and period appropriate to the 2020s. Instead of resisting the algorithm or trying to create art that stands outside of it, he lets it completely envelope the work. It's buzzy and meme-y but also philosophically dense, psychologically unsettling, and ultimately very avant-garde and singular. He's not capturing reality nor writing fiction but instead steering reality until it becomes something that transcends both fiction and non-fiction. It's hyperstitional, to use the @xenocosmography term, as in Fielder uses his initial idea to engineer reality towards making the statement he wants to make. But what makes it even more modern than that is that in every project the idea completely gets away from him, becomes sentient, and ultimately the project concludes in a much different direction than he could have ever conceived prior. Because as much as you try, reality can't be steered. I'm glad that You Can See Everything is making everyone realize how singular this kind of work is.

“Science fiction, always probing what is about to be thought, become, must eventually tackle without preconceptions a future neo-mystical society in which theology constitutes as major a force.” –– Philip K. Dick

JUST IN: OpenAI warns U.S. judiciary that there may be “no scientific way” to reliably detect AI-generated images & videos in the future.

Ours is the fight to remain Human Forever.

Just as pornography can stimulate the human sex drive without providing any actual sex, and democracy can stimulate the human power drive without providing any actual power, so AI can stimulate the thirst for intelligence without providing any understanding of God.