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Halfway through one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Charles Stross' Accelerando, we tune in to the members of an interstellar first contact mission as they pass the time debating whether the Technological Singularity has happened yet. Spoiler alert: all of them are uploaded minds appearing in a consensus VR environment as various post-human avatars, riding inside a computer the size of a grain of rice on a craft the size of a soda can. To readers it seems like a satire: what, if not this, would it take to convince you we're over the rainbow? But good science fiction provokes us to question the present, and so we must ask: what are we waiting for? Are we still moderns? Is this still Western civilization? Should we be looking forward to the age of machine superintelligence, or has it already happened, like physicist Cosma Shalizi argues in his blog post “The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone”? Here's a clip from that piece:Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even when attempted by geniuses)? Check.Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity, extending to our ecology, mentality and social organization? Check.Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and time? Check.Embrace of the fusion of humanity and machines? Check.Creation of vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing, communication and control, "the coldest of all cold monsters"? Check; we call them "the self-regulating market system" and "modern bureaucracies”.Maybe we ought to consider, like Bruno Latour, that We Have Never Been Modern. Or maybe, as Federico Campagna suggests in Prophetic Culture, each era's inhabitants identify as “modern” and project the “likely story” produced by their process of “worlding” to imagine futures that recede like mirages or rainbows as we approach the horizon of our understanding? By the time we arrive, we have transformed and the mysteries of the ancient and future are conserved. Some Indigenous cultures believe that all animals identify as “people” — perhaps every world is mundane to its native observers, and yet all of them arise out of chaos and ineffability. Science can't answer some questions because it depends on replicability and provisional consensus, and some questions ultimately force us out of attempts to get everything to make sense and into contemplative surrender to our own cognitive limits (no matter how much we augment ourselves).Science will, of course, continue. As Ted Chiang wrote twenty five years ago in his short story “Catching Crumbs from The Table”, advancements in AI and biotechnology could foreseeably “[leave] journals to publish second-hand accounts translated into human language… Journals for human audiences were reduced to vehicles of popularization, and poor ones at that, as even the most brilliant humans found themselves puzzled by translations of the latest findings… Some left the field altogether, but those who stayed shifted their attentions away from original research and toward hermeneutics: interpreting the scientific work of metahumans.”In 2025, living through the superexponential evolution of machine intelligence, this story hits close to home. What will we do when all breakthroughs are made by black box AI systems whose logic and insights evade us? We already have to take large language models on faith, doing our best to conserve a modest sliver of understanding as we resign ourselves to the practical benefits of successful but illegible prediction. But given that scientific progress has largely advanced through the proliferation of hyperspecialist experts who cannot understand one another's research, we should again ask if it were ever the case that we could explain everything, or whether we've just been ignoring the central importance of textual interpretation as we puzzled over the riddles of a world that never owed us any satisfying final answers?Whether we're modern or not, it is time for us to reconsider the foundations of ideas like informed consent, agency, evidence, and personhood. Whether you think we're still waiting around for the future or that we are living it, we live among an ecology of diverse intelligences and require a humbler approach…one strangely similar to that of Medieval serfs and jungle-dwelling foragers than first seems obvious…one that owes back pay to the dismissed disciplines of religion, magic, and myth. Which is why I'm excited to get weird with you in this episode.This week I speak with one of my closest comrades in philosophical investigation, Canadian author and film-maker J.F. Martel. Co-founder and co-host (with Phil Ford) of the internationally-acclaimed Weird Studies Podcast and Weirdosphere online learning platform, tenured para-academic explorer of high strangeness and the liminal zones between the known, unknown, and unknowable, J.F. is a perfect partner with whom to refine inquiry into persistent and tricky questions like:– What is the nature of technology and how does it change as our seemingly-discrete tools and built environments merge into a planet-scale thinking machine?– How can we tell when AI achieves personhood, and what does it take to be “good parents” of beings that are fundamentally beyond our control?– What can religion and fairy tales teach us about living well in a world where our explanatory frameworks fail us?– How can we re-think and re-claim healthy institutions to serve human flourishing after the end of history as we know it?Subscribe, Rate, & Comment on YouTube • Apple Podcasts • SpotifyPlease consider becoming a patron or making tax-deductible monthly contributions at every.org/humansontheloop. (You'll get all the same perks.)J.F.'s LinksReclaimingArt.comWeirdStudies.comWeirdosphere.orgJF on X | Weird Studies Discord & SubRedditReclaiming Art in The Age of Artifice (book)Project LinksRead the project pitch & planning docDig into the full episode and essay archivesJoin the online commons for Wisdom x Technology on DiscordThe Future Fossils Discord Server abides!Contact me about partnerships, consulting, your life, or other mysteriesChapters0:00:00 - Teaser0:01:01 - Introduction0:09:32 - Revisiting Reclaiming Art in The Age of Artifice0:15:12 - What we lose and gain by automating culture0:31:12 - Wendell Berry's poem “A Timbered Choir”0:36:50 - Transcendental, Machinic, Immanental, Imaginal, and Fractal0:46:21 - Black Box Personhood & AI as A 'Thou'1:00:00 - Is AI Magic?1:06:10 - Fairy Tales, Faith, and Submission after Modernity1:10:27 - Do we still need institutions?1:16:59 - Thanks & AnnouncementsBack Catalogue FF 18 - J.F. Martel on Art, Magic, & The Terrifying Zone of Uncanny AwesomenessFF 71 - J.F. Martel on Sequels & Simulacra, Blade Runner 2049 & Stranger Things 2WS 26 Living in a Glass AgeFF 126 - Phil Ford & JF Martel on Weird Studies & Plural RealitiesJRS Currents 064: Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel on Art x AIFF 214 - J.F. Martel, Phil Ford, & Megan Phipps on Weird Cybernetics: Waking Up From The EcstasyFF 231 - Eric Wargo & J.F. Martel on Art as Precognition, Biblically-Accurate A.I., and How to Navigate Ruptures in Space-TimeMentioned MediaWalter Benjamin's “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”Erik Hoel's “Curious George and the case of the unconscious culture”New York Encounter (event)Art is dead. Long live Art with Android Jones | Mind Meld 323 Third Eye DropsCosma Shalizi & Henry Farrell's “Artificial Intelligence is a Familiar-Looking Monster”Sigmund Freud's Beyond The Pleasure PrincipleWendell Berry's “A Timbered Choir”Henri Corbin's “Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal”William Irwin Thompson's Imaginary LandscapesDanny Hillis' “The Enlightenment Is Dead. Long Live The Entanglement”Neri Oxman's “The Age of Entanglement”David Krakauer's “Emergent Engineering”Kevin Kelly's Out of ControlFF 150 - A Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs & The Weird with Sean Esbjörn-HargensFF 223 - Timothy Morton on A New Christian Ecology & Systems Thinking BlasphemyTop Aerospace Scientists Suspect UFOs are Biblical Time Machines | Diana Walsh Pasulka on The Danny Jones PodcastZiwei Xu et al.'s “Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models”Isaac Asimov's FoundationGilles Deleuze's Difference and RepetitionOther MentionsDonna TartMatt CardinMichael PhilipBenoit MandelbrotJames AllenGregory BatesonDavid HumeGottfried LeibnizL. Ron HubbardErik DavisCarl JungJacques LacanAlbert CamusJean-Paul SartreCurt JaimungalStafford BeerCarl SaganJames HillmanPhil FordMarie-Louise von FranzGK ChestertonEdmund Burke This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
PARIGI (FRANCIA) (ITALPRESS) - "Troppo spesso ho sentito dire che dovremmo replicare ciò che fanno gli altri e rincorrere i loro punti di forza. Penso che invece dovremmo investire in ciò che sappiamo fare meglio e costruire sui nostri punti di forza qui in Europa, che sono la nostra padronanza di scienza e tecnologia che abbiamo dato al mondo". Lo ha detto la presidente della Commissione Europea, Ursula Von der Leyen, nel suo intervento a Parigi all'AI Summit.sat/gsl (fonte video: Commissione Europea)
PARIGI (FRANCIA) (ITALPRESS) - "Troppo spesso ho sentito dire che dovremmo replicare ciò che fanno gli altri e rincorrere i loro punti di forza. Penso che invece dovremmo investire in ciò che sappiamo fare meglio e costruire sui nostri punti di forza qui in Europa, che sono la nostra padronanza di scienza e tecnologia che abbiamo dato al mondo". Lo ha detto la presidente della Commissione Europea, Ursula Von der Leyen, nel suo intervento a Parigi all'AI Summit.sat/gsl (fonte video: Commissione Europea)
PARIGI (FRANCIA) (ITALPRESS) - "Troppo spesso ho sentito dire che dovremmo replicare ciò che fanno gli altri e rincorrere i loro punti di forza. Penso che invece dovremmo investire in ciò che sappiamo fare meglio e costruire sui nostri punti di forza qui in Europa, che sono la nostra padronanza di scienza e tecnologia che abbiamo dato al mondo". Lo ha detto la presidente della Commissione Europea, Ursula Von der Leyen, nel suo intervento a Parigi all'AI Summit.sat/gsl (fonte video: Commissione Europea)
"The Good Listening To" Podcast with me Chris Grimes! (aka a "GLT with me CG!")
Send us a textMurray Cowell, aka 'The Grizzled Veteran of the Training World!' is an extraordinarily lovely man and this is a wonderful rich episode, suffused with great storytelling, life reflection and wisdom. He is a seasoned Trainer and a very strong advocate indeed for helping fellow Trainers, Coaches & Training Consultancies to both succeed & sustain in all their endeavours, through his company Accelerando. Murray shares his transformative journey from overcoming early setbacks to building a successful career in coaching and training. His insights into personal happiness, community engagement, and the critical importance of mental health advocacy inspire listeners to reflect on their paths to fulfilment and growth.• Murray's early move to Somerset ignited a desire for a sense of belonging • Emphasizes the importance of understanding different levels within organizations • Discusses happiness as an internal journey shaped by life experiences • Shares creativity and passion for food and music as vital elements of life • Introduces the Client Find Club for fostering connections in the training industry • Advocates for mental health discussions through suicide prevention effortsWhat if you could break free from the feast and famine cycle of the Training industry? Join us as we sit down with Murray Cowell, a revered figure in the training world and founder of Accelerando, to uncover the secrets behind scaling and growing training businesses sustainably. With over 27 years of experience, Murray shares his journey from his formative years in Somerset, how his background shaped his unique ability to spot potential in both people and businesses, and the impactful stories that have defined his career. Murray's passion extends beyond the boardroom, and in this episode, we explore the vibrant tapestry of his interests outside professional pursuits. From his affinity for composing music and performing at legendary venues to his love for camping and outdoor adventures, Murray's life is a testament to the harmony between work and play. He also shares his admiration for the band Fontaines DC and recounts his connection to Somerset traditions, offering listeners a glimpse into the personal experiences that have fueled his relentless pursuit of excellence.The conversation takes a delightful turn as we discuss the synergy found in coaching calls and the unexpected connection between spreadsheet skills and collaboration. Murray's signature Caramel Tres Leches cake becomes an emblem of how personal passions can enrich professional endeavors. We reflect on wisdom from Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" and consider the alignment of business objectives with personal and professional growth. Whether you're a training industry veteran or just starting out, Murray's insights promise to inspiTune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website. Show Website: https://www.thegoodlisteningtoshow.com You can email me about the Show: chris@secondcurve.uk Twitter thatchrisgrimes LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-grimes-actor-broadcaster-facilitator-coach/ FaceBook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/842056403204860 Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :) Thanks for listening!
FFoDpod.com Patreon Merchandise CC-BY-SA "SCP-550" by Accelerando, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-550. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aquNHHdsh0k
Ejaaz is back on the podcast to explore the cutting edge of AI agents and their potential takeover—starting with blockchains, powered by crypto rails. Is AI x Crypto the next big wave or just hype? Is any of it investible? Ejaaz, former Coinbase product manager and current Crypto-AI fund operator, shares what's real, what's not, where VCs are allocating their capital and much more in today's episode. ------
This week's host, Moe Roddy, is joined by Erica Mattson to chat crossing the Pacific with a crew of 2 on a small boat. Erica and her father, Robin Jeffers, set sail on her Moore 24 Accelerando for the 2024 Pacific Cup (Pac Cup) on July 15th. Hear how she qualified for the US Sailing Team in the ‘90s, how she committed to sailing to Hawaii, their sleeping and eating schedule during the race, how to decompress once you're back on land, and what they'll do differently than their 2022 Pacific Cup race. Follow Erica during the race at YBTracking.com
Key Insights:* Finally, at long last, over the next two generations the tide is likely to be flowing strongly toward near-universal global development...* The fear was that dehyperglobalization would rob poorer countries of their ability to develop the export comparative advantages to support the manufacturing engineering clusters they need for learning by doing, establishing a good educational system, and converging to global North standards of living...* This fear appears to have been very overblown...* Optimism about future income growth and globalization is warranted because India has more people in it than Africa: the Asia Circle from Japan to Pakistan and down to Indonesia and up to Mongolia is and always has been half the human race. And South Asia and Southeast Asia are now in gear...* As long as dealing with global warming does not absorb too many of the resources that could otherwise be devoted to income growth...* This is true even though the great wave of increasing international trade intensity and integration that began in 1945 came to an end in 2008...* Even so, since 2008 there has still been increasing global integration in the flow of ideas and the growing interdependence of value chains...* A substantial part of the post-2008 reversal of globalization was partially due to China onshoring its supply chains—the pre-2008 situation in which China's manufacturing knowledge was vastly behind its manufacturing intensity was highly unstable...* This, however, hinges sufficient state capacity—which is not just the ability to do infrastructure and reorganize your economy, but also have people's stuff not get stolen from them either by local thieves or by government functionaries...* Distributional issues are another potential key blockage—the benefits of technological change flow to the global north, or to a small predatory internal élite, or the market economy's distribution goes spontaneously awry...* But there is the question of how much distribution matters in a rich world where few are starving—matters for social power, yes, and for whatever happinesses flow from that, but does distribution matter otherwise?* Countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America may be stubborn development problems for generations, however...* That beside, the basic mission of industrialization to uplift the human world out of poverty is likely to be complete by 2050 if we are lucky, by 2100 if we are not...* There is good reason to think that the next generation will be for the world better and more impressive than the last generation. And the last generation was, on a world scale, you know, better and more impressive than was the post-WWII Thirty Glorious Years in the North Atlantic...* Future guests, possibly?: Dietz Vollrath, Arvind Subramanian, Charlie Stross...References:* Fourastié, Jean. 1979. Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975. Paris: Fayard. .* Subramanian, Arvind, Martin Kessler, & Emanuele Properzi. 2023. "Trade Hyperglobalization is Dead. Long Live...?" Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper, No. 23-11. .* Stross, Charles. 2005. Accelerando. New York: Ace Books. * Vollrath, Dietrich. 2020. Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. .+, of course:* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. . Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe
Serene is a hacker in the truest sense of the word. She's applied a hacker mindset to learn coding, piano, and blend art and engineering in fascinating ways. You'll find her collaborating on-stage with Grimes one night and coding censorship resistant technologies the next day. As a self-taught coder she was the first engineer hired into Google Ideas when she was just a teenager. At Google she pioneered work on WebRTC proxies that she continued as a fellow at the Open Tech Fund and was eventually released as a Tor-enabling tool called Snowflake. Serene took a hiatus from working as a full-time engineer to pursue a career as a concert pianist where she quickly gained recognition for her incredible talent. She became one of the few self-taught concert pianists to perform Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 (which I highly recommend checking out on YouTube). Serene is also known for the audiovisual artistry of her shows which is drawn from her own experiences with synesthesia that results in her seeing music as colors. As the conflict in Ukraine started, Snowflake started to see exponential usage patterns as Russian citizens looked to circumvent state censorship and Serene decided to build a company around the technology to enhance development and build independent deployment models. That company is called Snowstorm. With Snowstorm, Serene is focused on saving cyberspace from balkanization and censorship and ensuring that all global citizens have unfiltered access to the Internet. In this OODAcast, we explore Serene's career and then dive into ways we can preserve the original intent of the Internet with censorship resistant and privacy enhancing technology stacks that can be easily deployed and scaled. Official Bio: SERENE is a concert pianist from a most unexpected trajectory. Though she never attended conservatory, her solo performances have been described by The Paris Review as a “spectacle to match the New York Philharmonic”, and today Serene has become one of the most talked about young talents in classical music, and beyond. Beyond concertizing, Serene enjoys other collaborations such as her role as composer for Kanye West's Opera, premiered at Lincoln Center & Art Basel, as well as pianist & technologist with Blue Man Group's founder, bringing futuristic innovations at the intersection of music and technology while also highlighting her own audiovisual synesthesia. Previously, Serene was a computer scientist, Google Engineer, and senior research fellow on various projects, before leaving to fully focus on the piano. In the brief years since, she has cultivated a disciplined, personal, and spiritual approach to her music. With her intersections of many disciplines, plus the “ability to enthrall audiences”, she has grown an international following. Serene is one of very few self-taught pianists who've performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, which was described as “unprecedented” —Liszt Academy. Serene loves sharing the beauty and power of classical music with all audiences, everywhere, in all venues ranging from the Vienna Musikverein, to a full orchestra in Golden Gate Park, to a decommissioned Boeing 747. Additional Links: Official Website Snowstorm Serene on Instagram Serene Rachmaninoff Concerto Book Recommendations: A Thousand Years of Non-linear History The Making of the Atomic Bomb The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect: a novel of the singularity Accelerando
This week we talk about the intersections of large language models, the golden age of television and its storytelling mishaps, making one's way through the weirding of the labor economy, and much more with two of my favorite Gen X science fiction aficionados, OG podcaster KMO and our mutual friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut. In this episode — a standalone continuation to my recent appearance on The KMO Show, we skip like a stone across mentions of every Star Trek series, the collapse of narratives and the social fabric, Westworld HBO, Star Wars Mandalorian vs. Andor vs. Rebels, chatGPT, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, H.P. Lovecraft, the Sheldrake-Abraham-McKenna Trialogues, Charles Stross' Accelerando, Adventure Time, Stanislav Grof's LSD psychotherapy, Francisco Varela, Blake Lemoine's meltdown over Google LaMDA, Integrated Information Theory, biosemiotics, Douglas Hofstadter, Max Tegmarck, Erik Davis, Peter Watts, The Psychedelic Salon, Melanie Mitchell, The Teafaerie, Kevin Kelly, consilience in science, Fight Club, and more…Or, if you prefer, here's a rundown of the episode generated by A.I. c/o my friends at Podium.page:In this episode, I explore an ambitious and well-connected conversation with guests KMO, a seasoned podcaster, and Kevin Walnut [sic], a close friend and supporter of the arts in Santa Fe. We dive deep into their thoughts on the social epistemology crisis, science fiction, deep fakes, and ontology. Additionally, we discuss their opinions on the Star Trek franchise, particularly their critiques of the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery. Through this engaging conversation, we examine the impact of storytelling and the evolution of science fiction in modern culture. We also explore the relationship between identity, media, and artificial intelligence, as well as the ethical implications of creating sentient artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the philosophical questions surrounding AI's impact on society and human existence. Join us for a thought-provoking and in-depth discussion on a variety of topics that will leave you questioning the future of humanity and our relationship with technology.✨ Before we get started, three big announcements!* I am leaving the Santa Fe Institute, in part to write a very ambitious book about technology, art, imagination, and Jurassic Park. You can be a part of the early discussion around this project by joining the Future Fossils Book Club's Jurassic Park live calls — the first of which will be on Saturday, 29 April — open to Substack and Patreon supporters:* Catch me in a Twitter Space with Nxt Museum on Monday 17 April at 11 am PST on a panel discussing “Creative Misuse of Technology” with Minne Atairu, Parag Mital, Caroline Sinders, and hosts Jesse Damiani and Charlotte Kent.* I'm back in Austin this October to play the Astronox Festival at Apache Pass! Check out this amazing lineup on which I appear alongside Juno Reactor, Entheogenic, Goopsteppa, DRRTYWULVZ, and many more great artists!✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work.Buy my music on Bandcamp! (This episode features “A Better Trip” from my recent live album by the same name.)Or if you're into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group and Discord server. Join us!Episode cover art by KMO and a whole bouquet of digital image manipulation apps.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• These show notes and the transcript were made possible with Podium.Page, a very cool new AI service I'm happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I'm a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don't wear it all the time, when I do it's sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I've ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned Media:KMO Show S01 E01 - 001 - Michael Garfield and Kevin WohlmutAn Edifying Thought on AI by Charles EisensteinIn Defense of Star Trek: Picard & Discovery by Michael GarfieldImprovising Out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldAI and the Transformation of the Human Spirit by Steven Hales(and yes I know it's on Quillette, and no I don't think this automatically disqualifies it)Future Fossils Book Club #1: Blindsight by Peter WattsFF 116 - The Next Ten Billion Years: Ugo Bardi & John Michael Greer as read by Kevin Arthur Wohlmut✨ Related Recent Future Fossils Episodes:FF 198 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Aliens, Land Spirits, & The Singularity (Part 2)FF 195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesFF 187 - Fear & Loathing on the Electronic Frontier with Kevin Welch & David Hensley of EFF-Austin FF 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutions FF 175 - C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as Art ✨ Chapters:0:15:45 - The Substance of Philosophy (58 Seconds)0:24:45 - Complicated TV Narratives and the Internet (104 Seconds)0:30:54 - Humans vs Hosts in Westworld (81 Seconds)0:38:09 - Philosophical Zombies and Artificial Intelligence (89 Seconds)0:43:00 - Popular Franchises Themes (71 Seconds)1:03:27 - Reflections on a Changing Media Landscape (89 Seconds)1:10:45 - The Pathology of Selective Evidence (92 Seconds)1:16:32 - Externalizing Trauma Through Technology (131 Seconds)1:24:51 - From Snow Maker to Thouandsaire (43 Seconds)1:36:48 - The Impact of Boomer Parenting (126 Seconds)✨ Keywords:Social Epistemology, Science Fiction, Deep Fakes, Ontology, Star Trek, Artificial Intelligence, AI Impact, Sentient AGI, Human-Machine Interconnectivity, Consciousness Theory, Westworld, Blade Runner 2049, AI in Economy, AI Companion Chatbots, Unconventional Career Path, AI and Education, AI Content Creation, AI in Media, Turing Test✨ UNEDITED machine-generated transcript generated by podium.page:0:00:00Five four three two one. Go. So it's not like Wayne's world where you say the two and the one silently. Now, Greetings future fossils.0:00:11Welcome to episode two hundred and one of the podcast that explores our place in time I'm your host, Michael Garfield. And this is one of these extra juicy and delicious episodes of the show where I really ratcheted up with our guests and provide you one of these singularity is near kind of ever everything is connected to everything, self organized criticality right at the edge of chaos conversations, deeply embedded in chapel parallel where suddenly the invisible architect picture of our cosmos starts to make itself apparent through the glass bead game of conversation. And I am that I get to share it with you. Our guests this week are KMO, one of the most seasoned and well researched and experienced podcasters that I know. Somebody whose show the Sea Realm was running all the way back in two thousand six, I found him through Eric Davis, who I think most of you know, and I've had on the show a number of times already. And also Kevin Walnut, who is a close friend of mine here in Santa Fe, a just incredible human being, he's probably the strongest single supporter of music that I'm aware of, you know, as far as local scenes are concerned and and supporting people's music online and helping get the word out. He's been instrumental to my family and I am getting ourselves situated here all the way back to when I visited Santa Fe in two thousand eighteen to participate in the Santa Fe Institute's Interplanetary Festival and recorded conversations on that trip John David Ebert and Michael Aaron Cummins. And Ike used so June. About hyper modernity, a two part episode one zero four and one zero five. I highly recommend going back to that, which is really the last time possibly I had a conversation just this incredibly ambitious on the show.0:02:31But first, I want to announce a couple things. One is that I have left the Santa Fe Institute. The other podcast that I have been hosting for them for the last three and a half years, Complexity Podcast, which is substantially more popular in future fossils due to its institutional affiliation is coming to a close, I'm recording one more episode with SFI president David Krakauer next week in which I'm gonna be talking about my upcoming book project. And that episode actually is conjoined with the big announcement that I have for members of the Future Fossil's listening audience and and paid supporters, which is, of course, the Jurassic Park Book Club that starts On April twenty ninth, we're gonna host the first of two video calls where I'm gonna dive deep into the science and philosophy Michael Creighton's most popular work of fiction and its impact on culture and society over the thirty three years since its publication. And then I'm gonna start picking up as many of the podcasts that I had scheduled for complexity and had to cancel upon my departure from SFI. And basically fuse the two shows.0:03:47And I think a lot of you saw this coming. Future fossils is going to level up and become a much more scientific podcast. As I prepare and research the book that I'm writing about Jurassic Park and its legacy and the relationship It has to ILM and SFI and the Institute of Eco Technics. And all of these other visionary projects that sprouted in the eighties and nineties to transition from the analog to the digital the collapse of the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the human and the non human worlds, it's gonna be a very very ambitious book and a very very ambitious book club. And I hope that you will get in there because obviously now I am out in the rain as an independent producer and very much need can benefit from and am deeply grateful for your support for this work in order to make things happen and in order to keep my family fed, get the lights on here with future fossils. So with that, I wanna thank all of the new supporters of the show that have crawled out of the woodwork over the last few weeks, including Raefsler Oingo, Brian in the archaeologist, Philip Rice, Gerald Bilak, Jamie Curcio, Jeff Hanson who bought my music, Kuaime, Mary Castello, VR squared, Nastia teaches, community health com, Ed Mulder, Cody Couiac, bought my music, Simon Heiduke, amazing visionary artist. I recommend you check out, Kayla Peters. Yeah. All of you, I just wow. Thank you so much. It's gonna be a complete melee in this book club. I'm super excited to meet you all. I will send out details about the call details for the twenty ninth sometime in the next few days via a sub tag in Patreon.0:06:09The amount of support that I've received through this transition has been incredible and it's empowering me to do wonderful things for you such as the recently released secret videos of the life sets I performed with comedian Shane Moss supporting him, opening for him here in Santa Fe. His two sold out shows at the Jean Coutu cinema where did the cyber guitar performances. And if you're a subscriber, you can watch me goofing off with my pedal board. There's a ton of material. I'm gonna continue to do that. I've got a lot of really exciting concerts coming up in the next few months that we're gonna get large group and also solo performance recordings from and I'm gonna make those available in a much more resplendent way to supporters as well as the soundtrack to Mark Nelson of the Institute of Eco Technics, his UC San Diego, Art Museum, exhibit retrospective looking at BioSphere two. I'm doing music for that and that's dropping. The the opening of that event is April twenty seventh. There's gonna be a live zoom event for that and then I'm gonna push the music out as well for that.0:07:45So, yeah, thank you all. I really, really appreciate you listening to the show. I am excited to share this episode with you. KMO is just a trove. Of insight and experience. I mean, he's like a perfect entry into the digital history museum that this show was predicated upon. So with that and also, of course, Kevin Willett is just magnificent. And for the record, stick around at the end of the conversation. We have some additional pieces about AI, and I think you're gonna really enjoy it. And yeah, thank you. Here we go. Alright. Cool.0:09:26Well, we just had a lovely hour of discussion for the new KMO podcast. And now I'm here with KMO who is The most inveterate podcaster I know. And I know a lot of them. Early adopts. And I think that weird means what you think it means. Inventor it. Okay. Yes. Hey, answer to both. Go ahead. I mean, you're not yet legless and panhandling. So prefer to think of it in term in terms of August estimation. Yeah. And am I allowed to say Kevin Walnut because I've had you as a host on True. Yeah. My last name was appeared on your show. It hasn't appeared on camos yet, but I don't really care. Okay. Great. Yeah. Karen Arthur Womlett, who is one of the most solid and upstanding and widely read and just generous people, I think I know here in Santa Fe or maybe anywhere. With excellent taste and podcasts. Yes. And who is delicious meat I am sampling right now as probably the first episode of future fossils where I've had an alcoholic beverage in my hand. Well, I mean, it's I haven't deprived myself. Of fun. And I think if you're still listening to the show after all these years, you probably inferred that. But at any rate, Welcome on board. Thank you. Thanks. Pleasure to be here.0:10:49So before we started rolling, I guess, so the whole conversation that we just had for your show camera was very much about my thoughts on the social epistemology crisis and on science fiction and deep fakes and all of these kinds of weird ontology and these kinds of things. But in between calls, we were just talking about how much you detest the first two seasons of Star Trek card and of Discovery. And as somebody, I didn't bother with doing this. I didn't send you this before we spoke, but I actually did write an SIN defense of those shows. No one. Yeah. So I am not attached to my opinion on this, but And I actually do wanna at some point double back and hear storytelling because when he had lunch and he had a bunch of personal life stuff that was really interesting. And juicy and I think worthy of discussion. But simply because it's hot on the rail right now, I wanna hear you talk about Star Trek. And both of you, actually, I know are very big fans of this franchise. I think fans are often the ones from whom a critic is most important and deserved. And so I welcome your unhinged rants. Alright. Well, first, I'll start off by quoting Kevin's brother, the linguist, who says, That which brings us closer to Star Trek is progress. But I'd have to say that which brings us closer to Gene Rottenberry and Rick Berman era Star Trek. Is progress. That which brings us closer to Kurtzmann. What's his first name? Alex. Alex Kurtzmann, Star Trek. Well, that's not even the future. I mean, that's just that's our drama right now with inconsistent Star Trek drag draped over it.0:12:35I liked the first JJ Abrams' Star Trek. I think it was two thousand nine with Chris Pine and Zachary Qinto and Karl Urban and Joey Saldana. I liked the casting. I liked the energy. It was fun. I can still put that movie on and enjoy it. But each one after that just seem to double down on the dumb and just hold that arm's length any of the philosophical stuff that was just amazing from Star Trek: The Next Generation or any of the long term character building, which was like from Deep Space nine.0:13:09And before seven of nine showed up on on Voyager, you really had to be a dedicated Star Trek fan to put up with early season's Voyager, but I did because I am. But then once she came on board and it was hilarious. They brought her onboard. I remember seeing Jerry Ryan in her cat suit on the cover of a magazine and just roll in my eyes and think, oh my gosh, this show is in such deep trouble through sinking to this level to try to save it. But she was brilliant. She was brilliant in that show and she and Robert Percardo as the doctor. I mean, it basically became the seven of nine and the doctor show co starring the rest of the cast of Voyager. And it was so great.0:13:46I love to hear them singing together and just all the dynamics of I'm human, but I was I basically came up in a cybernetic collective and that's much more comfortable to me. And I don't really have the option of going back it. So I gotta make the best of where I am, but I feel really superior to all of you. Is such it was such a charming dynamic. I absolutely loved it. Yes. And then I think a show that is hated even by Star Trek fans Enterprise. Loved Enterprise.0:14:15And, yes, the first three seasons out of four were pretty rough. Actually, the first two were pretty rough. The third season was that Zendy Ark in the the expanse. That was pretty good. And then season four was just astounding. It's like they really found their voice and then what's his name at CBS Paramount.0:14:32He's gone now. He got me too. What's his name? Les Moonves? Said, no. I don't like Star Trek. He couldn't he didn't know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. That was his level of engagement.0:14:44And he's I really like J.0:14:46J.0:14:46Abrams. What's that? You mean J. J. Abrams. Yeah. I think J. J. Is I like some of J. Abrams early films. I really like super eight. He's clearly his early films were clearly an homage to, like, eighties, Spielberg stuff, and Spielberg gets the emotional beats right, and JJ Abrams was mimicking that, and his early stuff really works. It's just when he starts adapting properties that I really love. And he's coming at it from a marketing standpoint first and a, hey, we're just gonna do the lost mystery box thing. We're gonna set up a bunch questions to which we don't know the answers, and it'll be up to somebody else to figure it out, somebody down the line. I as I told you, between our conversations before we were recording. I really enjoy or maybe I said it early in this one. I really like that first J. J. Abrams, Star Trek: Foam, and then everyone thereafter, including the one that Simon Pegg really had a hand in because he's clear fan. Yeah. Yeah. But they brought in director from one of the fast and the furious films and they tried to make it an action film on.0:15:45This is not Star Trek, dude. This is not why we like Star Trek. It's not for the flash, particularly -- Oh my god. -- again, in the first one, it was a stylistic choice. I'd like it, then after that is that's the substance of this, isn't it? It's the lens flares. I mean, that that's your attempt at philosophy. It's this the lens flares. That's your attempt at a moral dilemma. I don't know.0:16:07I kinda hate to start off on this because this is something about which I feel like intense emotion and it's negative. And I don't want that to be my first impression. I'm really negative about something. Well, one of the things about this show is that I always joke that maybe I shouldn't edit it because The thing that's most interesting to archaeologists is often the trash mitt and here I am tidying this thing up to be presentable to future historians or whatever like it I can sync to that for sure. Yeah. I'm sorry. The fact of it is you're not gonna know everything and we want it that way. No. It's okay. We'll get around to the stuff that I like. But yeah. So anyway yeah.0:16:44So I could just preassociate on Stretrick for a while, so maybe a focusing question. Well, but first, you said there's a you had more to say, but you were I this this tasteful perspective. This is awesome. Well, I do have a focus on question for you. So let me just have you ask it because for me to get into I basically I'm alienated right now from somebody that I've been really good friends with since high school.0:17:08Because over the last decade, culturally, we have bifurcated into the hard right, hard left. And I've tried not to go either way, but the hard left irritates me more than the hard right right now. And he is unquestionably on the hard left side. And I know for people who are dedicated Marxist, or really grounded in, like, materialism and the material well-being of workers that the current SJW fanaticism isn't leftist. It's just crazed. We try to put everything, smash everything down onto this left right spectrum, and it's pretty easy to say who's on the left and who's on the right even if a two dimensional, two axis graph would be much more expressive and nuanced.0:17:49Anyway, what's your focus in question? Well, And I think there is actually there is a kind of a when we ended your last episode talking about the bell riots from d s nine -- Mhmm. -- that, you know, how old five? Yeah. Twenty four. Ninety five did and did not accurately predict the kind of technological and economic conditions of this decade. It predicted the conditions Very well. Go ahead and finish your question. Yeah. Right.0:18:14That's another thing that's retreated in picard season two, and it was actually worth it. Yeah. Like, it was the fact that they decided to go back there was part of the defense that I made about that show and about Discovery's jump into the distant future and the way that they treated that I posted to medium a year or two ago when I was just watching through season two of picard. And for me, the thing that I liked about it was that they're making an effort to reconcile the wonder and the Ethiopian promise And, you know, this Kevin Kelly or rather would call Blake Protopian, right, that we make these improvements and that they're often just merely into incremental improvements the way that was it MLK quoted that abolitionists about the long arc of moral progress of moral justice. You know, I think that there's something to that and patitis into the last this is a long question. I'm mad at I'm mad at these. Thank you all for tolerating me.0:19:22But the when to tie it into the epistemology question, I remember this seeing this impactful lecture by Carnegie Mellon and SFI professor Simon Didayo who was talking about how by running statistical analysis on the history of the proceedings of the Royal Society, which is the oldest scientific journal, that you could see what looked like a stock market curve in sentiment analysis about the confidence that scientists had at the prospect of unifying knowledge. And so you have, like, conciliance r s curve here that showed that knowledge would be more and more unified for about a century or a hundred and fifty years then it would go through fifty years of decline where something had happened, which was a success of knowledge production. Had outpaced our ability to integrate it. So we go through these kinds of, like, psychedelic peak experiences collectively, and then we have sit there with our heads in our hands and make sense of everything that we've learned over the last century and a half and go through a kind of a deconstructive epoch. Where we don't feel like the center is gonna hold anymore. And that is what I actually As as disappointing as I accept that it is and acknowledge that it is to people who were really fueling themselves on that more gene rottenberry era prompt vision for a better society, I actually appreciated this this effort to explore and address in the shows the way that they could pop that bubble.0:21:03And, like, it's on the one hand, it's boring because everybody's trying to do the moral complexity, anti hero, people are flawed, thing in narrative now because we have a general loss of faith in our institutions and in our rows. On the other hand, like, that's where we are and that's what we need to process And I think there is a good reason to look back at the optimism and the quarian hope of the sixties and early seventies. We're like, really, they're not so much the seventies, but look back on that stuff and say, we wanna keep telling these stories, but we wanna tell it in a way that acknowledges that the eighties happened. And that this is you got Tim Leary, and then you've got Ronald Reagan. And then That just or Dick Nixon. And like these things they wash back and forth. And so it's not unreasonable to imagine that in even in a world that has managed to how do you even keep a big society like that coherent? It has to suffer kind of fabric collapses along the way at different points. And so I'm just curious your thoughts about that. And then I do have another prompt, but I wanna give Kevin the opportunity to respond to this as well as to address some of the prompts that you brought to this conversation? This is a conversation prompt while we weren't recording. It has nothing to do with Sartreks. I'll save that for later. Okay.0:22:25Well, everything you just said was in some way related to a defense of Alex Kurtzmann Star Trek. And it's not my original idea. I'm channeling somebody from YouTube, surely. But Don't get points for theme if the storytelling is incompetent. That's what I was gonna Yeah. And the storytelling in all of Star Trek: Discovery, and in the first two seasons of picard was simply incompetent.0:22:53When Star Trek, the next generation was running, they would do twenty, twenty four, sometimes more episodes in one season. These days, the season of TVs, eight episodes, ten, and they spend a lot more money on each episode. There's a lot more special effects. There's a lot more production value. Whereas Star Trek: The Next Generation was, okay, we have these standing sets. We have costumes for our actors. We have Two dollars for special effects. You better not introduce a new alien spaceship. It that costs money. We have to design it. We have to build it. So use existing stuff. Well, what do you have? You have a bunch of good actors and you have a bunch of good writers who know how to tell a story and craft dialogue and create tension and investment with basically a stage play and nothing in the Kerstmann era except one might argue and I would have sympathy strange new worlds. Comes anywhere close to that level of competence, which was on display for decades. From Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space nines, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek Enterprise. And so, I mean, I guess, in that respect, it's worth asking because, I mean, all of us, I think, are fans of Deep Space nine.0:24:03You don't think that it's a shift in focus. You don't think that strange in world is exempt because it went back to a more episodic format because what you're talking about is the ability for rather than a show runner or a team of show runners to craft a huge season, long dramatic arc. You've got people that are like Harlan Ellison in the original series able to bring a really potent one off idea to the table and drop it. And so there are there's all of those old shows are inconsistent from episode to episode. Some are they have specific writers that they would bring back again and that you could count to knock out of the park. Yeah. DC Fontana. Yeah.0:24:45So I'm curious to your thoughts on that as well as another part of this, which is when we talk when we talk your show about Doug Rushkoff and and narrative collapse, and he talks about how viewers just have different a way, it's almost like d s nine was possibly partially responsible for this change in what people expected from so. From television programming in the documentary that was made about that show and they talk about how people weren't ready for cereal. I mean, for I mean, yeah, for these long arcs, And so there is there's this question now about how much of this sort of like tiresome moral complexity and dragging narrative and all of this and, like, things like Westworld where it becomes so baroque and complicated that, like, you have, like, die hard fans like me that love it, but then you have a lot of people that just lost interest. They blacked out because the show was trying to tell a story that was, like, too intricate like, too complicated that the the show runners themselves got lost. And so that's a JJ Abrams thing too, the puzzle the mystery box thing where You get to the end of five seasons of lost and you're like, dude, did you just forget?0:25:56Did you wake up five c five episodes ago and just, oh, right. Right. We're like a chatbot that only give you very convincing answers based on just the last two or three interactions. But you don't remember the scene that we set. Ten ten responses ago. Hey. You know, actually, red articles were forget who it was, which series it was, they were saying that there's so many leaks and spoilers in getting out of the Internet that potentially the writers don't know where they're going because that way it can't be with the Internet. Yeah. Sounds interesting. Yeah. That sounds like cover for incompetence to be.0:26:29I mean, on the other hand, I mean, you did hear, like, Nolan and Joy talking about how they would they were obsessed with the Westworld subreddit and the fan theories and would try to dodge Like, if they had something in their mind that they found out that people are re anticipating, they would try to rewrite it. And so there is something about this that I think is really speaks to the nature of because I do wanna loop in your thoughts on AI to because you're talking about this being a favorite topic. Something about the, like, trying to The demands on the self made by predatory surveillance technologies are such that the I'm convinced the adaptive response is that we become more stochastic or inconsistent in our identities. And that we kind of sublimate from a more solid state of identity to or through a liquid kind of modernity biologic environment to a gaseous state of identity. That is harder to place sorry, harder to track. And so I think that this is also part of and this is the other question I wanted to ask you, and then I'm just gonna shut up for fifteen minutes is do you when you talk about loving Robert Ricardo and Jerry Ryan as the doctor at seven zero nine, One of the interesting things about that relationship is akin to stuff.0:27:52I know you've heard on Kevin have heard on future fossils about my love for Blade Runner twenty forty nine and how it explores all of these different these different points along a gradient between what we think of in the current sort of general understanding as the human and the machine. And so there's this thing about seven, right, where she's She's a human who wants to be a machine. And then there's this thing about the doctor where he's a machine that wants to be a human. And you have to grant both on a logical statuses to both of them. And that's why I think they're the two most interesting characters. Right?0:28:26And so at any rate, like, this is that's there's I've seen writing recently on the Turing test and how, like, really, there should be a reverse Turing test to see if people that have become utterly reliant on outboard cognition and information processing. They can pass the drink. Right. Are they philosophical zombies now? Are they are they having some an experience that that, you know, people like, thick and and shilling and the missing and these people would consider the modern self or are they something else have we moved on to another more routine robotic kind of category of being? I don't know. There's just a lot there, but -- Well done. -- considering everything you just said, In twenty words or less, what's your question? See, even more, like I said, do you have the inveterate podcaster? I'd say There's all of those things I just spoke about are ways in which what we are as people and the nature of our media, feedback into fourth, into each other. And so I would just love to hear you reflect on any of that, be it through the lens of Star Trek or just through the lens of discussion on AI. And we'll just let the ball roll downhill. So with the aim of framing something positively rather than negatively.0:29:47In the late nineties, mid to late nineties. We got the X Files. And the X Files for the first few seasons was so It was so engaging for me because Prior to that, there had been Hollywood tropes about aliens, which informed a lot of science fiction that didn't really connect with the actual reported experience of people who claim to have encountered either UFOs, now called UAPs, or had close encounters physical contact. Type encounters with seeming aliens. And it really seemed like Chris Carter, who was the showrunner, was reading the same Usenet Newsgroups that I was reading about those topics. Like, really, we had suddenly, for the first time, except maybe for comedian, you had the Grey's, and you had characters experiencing things that just seemed ripped right out of the reports that people were making on USnet, which for young folks, this is like pre Worldwide Web. It was Internet, but with no pictures. It's all text. Good old days from my perspective is a grumpy old gen xer. And so, yeah, that was a breakthrough moment.0:30:54Any this because you mentioned it in terms of Jonathan Nolan and his co writer on Westworld, reading the subreddit, the West and people figured out almost immediately that there were two interweaving time lines set decades apart and that there's one character, the old guy played by Ed Harris, and the young guy played by I don't remember the actor. But, you know, that they were the same character and that the inveterate white hat in the beginning turns into the inveterate black cat who's just there for the perverse thrill of tormenting the hosts as the robots are called. And the thing that I love most about that first season, two things. One, Anthony Hopkins. Say no more. Two, the revelation that the park has been basically copying humans or figuring out what humans are by closely monitoring their behavior in the park and the realization that the hosts come to is that, holy shit compared to us, humans are very simple creatures. We are much more complex. We are much more sophisticated, nuanced conscious, we feel more than the humans do, and that humans use us to play out their perverse and sadistic fantasies. To me, that was the takeaway message from season one.0:32:05And then I thought every season after that was just diluted and confused and not really coherent. And in particular, I haven't if there's a fourth season, haven't There was and then the show got canceled before they could finish the story. They had the line in season three. It was done after season three. And I was super happy to see Let's see after who plays Jesse Pinkman? Oh, no. Aaron oh, shit. Paul. Yes. Yeah. I was super happy to see him and something substantial and I was really pleased to see him included in the show and it's like, oh, that's what you're doing with him? They did a lot more interesting stuff with him in season four. I did they. They did a very much more interesting stuff. I think it was done after season three. If you tell me season four is worth taking in, I blow. I thought it was.0:32:43But again, I only watch television under very specific set of circumstances, and that's how I managed to enjoy television because I was a fierce and unrepentant hyperlogical critic of all media as a child until I managed to start smoking weed. And then I learned to enjoy myself. As we mentioned in the kitchen as I mentioned in the kitchen, if I smoke enough weed, Star Trek: Discovery is pretty and I can enjoy it on just a second by second level where if I don't remember what the character said thirty seconds ago, I'm okay. But I absolutely loved in season two when they brought in Hanson Mountain as as Christopher Pike. He's suddenly on the discovery and he's in the captain's chair. And it's like he's speaking for the audience. The first thing he says is, hey, why don't we turn on the lights? And then hey, all you people sitting around the bridge. We've been looking at your faces for a whole season. We don't even think about you. Listen to a round of introductions. Who are you? Who are you? It's it's if I were on set. You got to speak.0:33:53The writers is, who are these characters? We've been looking at them every single episode for a whole season. I don't know their names. I don't know anything about them. Why are they even here? Why is it not just Michael Burnham and an automated ship? And then it was for a while -- Yeah. -- which is funny. Yeah. To that point, And I think this kind of doubles back. The thing that I love about bringing him on and all of the people involved in strange and worlds in particular, is that these were lifelong fans of this series, I mean, of this world. Yeah. And so in that way, gets to this the idiosyncrasy question we're orbiting here, which is when these things are when the baton is passed well, it's passed to people who have now grown up with this stuff.0:34:40I personally cannot stand Jurassic World. Like, I think that Colin Trivaro should never have been in put at the reins. Which one did he direct? Oh, he did off he did first and the third. Okay. But, I mean, he was involved in all three very heavily.0:34:56And there's something just right at the outset of that first Jurassic World where you realize that this is not a film that's directly addressing the issues that Michael Creighton was trying to explore here. It's a film about its own franchise. It's a film about the fact that they can't just stop doing the same thing over and over again as we expect a different question. How can we not do it again? Right. And so it's actually, like, unpleasantly soft, conscious, in that way that I can't remember I'll try to find it for the show notes, but there's an Internet film reviewer who is talking about what happens when, like, all cinema has to take this self referential turn.0:35:34No. And films like Logan do it really well. But there are plenty of examples where it's just cheeky and self aware because that's what the ironic sensibility is obsessed with. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that where it's, like, you're talking about, like, Abrams and the the Star Wars seven and you know, that whole trilogy of Disney Star Wars, where it's, in my opinion, completely fumbled because there it's just empty fan service, whereas when you get to Andor, love Andor. Andor is amazing because they're capable of providing all of those emotional beats that the fans want and the ref the internal references and good dialogue. But they're able to write it in a way that's and shoot it in a way. Gilroy and Bo Willeman, basic of the people responsible for the excellent dialogue in Andor.0:36:31And I love the production design. I love all the stuff set on Coruscant, where you saw Coruscant a lot in the prequel trilogy, and it's all dayglow and bright and just in your face. And it's recognizable as Coruscant in andor, but it's dour. It's metropolis. It's all grays and it's and it's highlighting the disparity between where the wealthy live and where the poor live, which Lucas showed that in the prequel trilogy, but even in the sports bar where somebody tries to sell death sticks to Obi wan. So it's super clean and bright and just, you know, It shines too much. Personally though, and I just wanna stress, KMO is not grumpy media dude, I mean, this is a tiny fraction about, but I am wasting this interview with you. Love. All of the Dave Felloni animated Star Wars stuff, even rebels. Love it all.0:37:26I I'm so glad they aged up the character and I felt less guilty about loving and must staying after ahsoka tano? My favorite Star Wars character is ahsoka tano. But if you only watch the live action movies, you're like who? Well, I guess now that she's been on the Mandalorian, he's got tiny sliver of a foothold -- Yeah. -- in the super mainstream Star Wars. And that was done well, I thought. It was. I'm so sorry that Ashley Epstein doesn't have any part in it. But Rosario Dawson looks the part. She looks like a middle aged Asaka and think they tried to do some stuff in live action, which really should have been CGI because it's been established that the Jedi can really move, and she looked human. Which she is? If you put me on film, I'm gonna lick human. Right. Not if you're Canada Reeves, I guess. You got that. Yeah. But yeah.0:38:09So I do wanna just go real briefly back to this question with you about because we briefly talked about chat, GPT, and these other things in your half of this. And, yeah, I found out just the other night my friend, the t ferry, asked Chad g p t about me, and it gave a rather plausible and factual answer. I was surprised and That's what these language models do. They put plausible answers. But when you're doing search, you want correct answers. Right. I'm very good at that. Right. Then someone shared this Michelle Bowen's actually the famous PTP guy named him. Yeah. So, you know, So Michelle shared this article by Steven Hales and Colette, that was basically making the argument that there are now they're gonna be all these philosophical zombies, acting as intelligent agents sitting at the table of civilization, and there will be all the philosophical zombies of the people who have entirely yielded their agency to them, and they will be cohabitating with the rest of us.0:39:14And what an unpleasant scenario, So in light of that, and I might I'd love to hear you weave that together with your your thoughts on seven zero nine and the doctor and on Blade Runner twenty forty nine. And this thing that we're fumbling through as a species right now. Like, how do we got a new sort of taxonomy? Does your not audience need like a minute primer on P zombies? Might as well. Go for it.0:39:38So a philosophical zombie is somebody who behaves exactly like an insult person or a person with interior experience or subjective experience, but they don't have any subjective experience. And in Pardon me for interrupt. Wasn't that the question about the the book we read in your book club, a blind sign in this box? Yes. It's a black box, a drawn circle. Yeah. Chinese room experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Daniel, it goes out. You don't know, it goes on inside the room. Chinese room, that's a tangent. We can come back to it. P. Zombie. P. Zombie is somebody or is it is an entity. It's basically a puppet. It looks human. It acts human. It talks like a human. It will pass a Turing test, but it has no interior experience.0:40:25And when I was going to grad school for philosophy of mind in the nineteen nineties, this was all very out there. There was no example of something that had linguistic competence. Which did not have internal experience. But now we have large language models and generative pretrained transformer based chatbots that don't have any internal experience. And yet, when you interact with them, it seems like there is somebody there There's a personality there. And if you go from one model to a different, it's a very different personality. It is distinctly different. And yet we have no reason to believe that they have any sort of internal experience.0:41:01So what AI in the last decade and what advances has demonstrated to us and really even before the last decade You back in the nineties when the blue beat Gary Casper off at at chess. And what had been the one of the defining characteristics of human intelligence was we're really good at this abstract mathematical stuff. And yeah, calculators can calculate pie in a way that we can't or they can cube roots in a way that humans generally can't, creative in their application of these methodologies And all of a sudden, well, yeah, it kinda seems like they are. And then when what was an alpha go -- Mhmm. -- when it be to least a doll in go, which is a much more complex game than chess and much more intuitive based. That's when we really had to say, hey, wait a minute. Maybe this notion that These things are the exclusive province of us because we have a special sort of self awareness. That's bunk. And the development of large language models since then has absolutely demonstrated that competence, particularly linguistic competence and in creative activities like painting and poetry and things like that, you don't need a soul, you don't even need to sense a self, it's pretty it's a pretty simple hack, actually. And Vahrv's large language models and complex statistical modeling and things, but it doesn't require a soul.0:42:19So that was the Peter Watts' point in blindsight. Right? Which is Look revolves around are do these things have a subjective experience, and do they not these aliens that they encounter? I've read nothing but good things about that book and I've read. It's extraordinary. But his lovecrafty and thesis is that you actually lovecraftian in twenty twenty three. Oh, yeah. In the world, there's more lovecraftian now than it was when he was writing. Right? So cough about the conclusion of a Star Trek card, which is season of Kraft yet. Yes. That's a that's a com Yeah. The holes in his fan sense. But that was another show that did this I liked for asking this question.0:42:54I mean, at this point, you either have seen this or you haven't you never will. The what the fuck turn when they upload picard into a synth body and the way that they're dealing with the this the pinocchio question Let's talk about Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. But I mean yeah. So I didn't like the wave I did not like the wave of card handled that. I love the wave and Blade Runner handled it. So you get no points for themes. Yeah. Don't deliver on story and character and coherence. Yeah. Fair. But yeah. And to be not the dog, Patrick Stewart, because it's clear from the ready room just being a part of this is so emotional and so awesome for everyone involved. And it's It's beautiful. Beautiful. But does when you when you see these, like, entertainment weekly interviews with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard about Jurassic World, and it's clear that actors are just so excited to be involved in a franchise that they're willing to just jettison any kind of discretion about how the way that it's being treated. They also have a contractual obligation to speak in positive terms about -- They do. -- of what they feel. Right. Nobody's yeah. Nobody's doing Shout out to Rystellis Howard, daughter of Ron Howard.0:44:11She was a director, at least in the first season, maybe the second season of the Mandalorian. And her episodes I mean, I she brought a particular like, they had Bryce Dallas Howard, Tico, ITT, directed some episodes. Deborah Chow, who did all of Obi wan, which just sucked. But her contributions to the Mandalorian, they had a particular voice. And because that show is episodic, Each show while having a place in a larger narrative is has a beginning middle and end that you can bring in a director with a particular voice and give that episode that voice, and I really liked it. And I really liked miss Howard's contribution.0:44:49She also in an episode of Black Mirror. The one where everyone has a social credit score. Knows Donuts. Black Mirror is a funny thing because It's like, reality outpaces it. Yeah. I think maybe Charlie Bruker's given up on it because they haven't done it in a while. Yeah. If you watch someone was now, like, five, six years later, it's, yes, or what? See, yes. See, damn. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah. I don't know. I just thing that I keep circling and I guess we come to on the show a lot is the way that memory forms work substantiates an integrity in society and in the way that we relate to things and the way that we think critically about the claims that are made on truth and so on and say, yeah, I don't know. That leads right into the largest conversation prompt that I had about AI. Okay? So we were joking when we set up this date that this was like the trial logs between Terence Buchanan and Rupert Shell Drake. And what's his name? Real Abraham. Yeah. Yeah. All Abraham. And Rupert Shell Drake is most famous for a steward of Morphe resin.0:45:56So does AI I've never really believed that Norfolk residents forms the base of human memory, but is that how AI works? It brings these shapes from the past and creates new instantiation of them in the present. Is AI practicing morphic resonance in real life even if humans are or not? I've had a lot of interaction with AI chatbots recently. And as I say, different models produce different seeming personalities. And you can tell, like, you can just quiz them. Hey, we're talking about this. Do you remember what I said about it ten minutes ago? And, no, they don't remember more than the last few exchanges.0:46:30And yet, there seems to be a continuity that belies the lack of short term memory. And is that more for residents or is that what's the word love seeing shapes and clouds parad paradolia. Yeah. Is that me imparting this continuity of personality to the thing, which is really just spitting out stuff, which is designed to seem plausible given what the input was. And I can't answer that. Or it's like Steven Nagmanovich in free play talks about somewhat I'm hoping to have on the show at some point.0:47:03This year talks about being a professional improviser and how really improvisation is just composition at a much faster timescale. And composition is just improvisation with the longer memory. And how when I started to think about it in those terms, the continuity that you're talking about is the continuity of an Alzheimer's patient who can't remember that their children have grown up and You know, that that's you have to think about it because you can recognize the Alzheimer's and your patient as your dad, even though he doesn't recognize you, there is something more to a person than their memories. And conversely, if you can store and replicate and move the memories to a different medium, have you moved the person? Maybe not. Yeah. So, yeah, that's interesting because that gets to this more sort of essentialist question about the human self. Right. Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Yeah. Go there. Go there. A joy. Yes.0:47:58So in Blade Runner twenty forty nine, we have our protagonist Kaye, who is a replicant. He doesn't even have a name, but he's got this AI holographic girlfriend. But the ad for the girlfriend, she's naked. When he comes home, she is She's constantly changing clothes, but it's always wholesome like nineteen fifty ish a tire and she's making dinner for him and she lays the holographic dinner over his very prosaic like microwave dinner. And she's always encouraging him to be more than he is. And when he starts to uncover the evidence that he might be like this chosen one, like replicant that was born rather than made.0:48:38She's all about it. She's, yes, you're real, and she wants to call him Joe's. K is not a name. That's just the first letter in your serial number. You're Joe. I'm gonna call you Joe.0:48:46And then when she's about to be destroyed, The last thing is she just rushes to me. She says, I love you. But then later he encounters an ad for her and it's an interactive ad. And she says, you looked tired. You're a good Joe. And he realizes and hopefully the attentive audience realizes as real as she seemed earlier, as vital, and as much as she seemed like an insult being earlier, she's not. That was her programming. She's designed to make you feel good by telling you what you want to hear. And he has that realization. And at that point, he's there's no hope for me. I'm gonna help this Rick Deckard guy hook up with his daughter, and then I'm just gonna lie down and bleed to death. Because my whole freaking existence was a lie. But he's not bitter. He seems to be at peace. I love that. That's a beautiful angle on that film or a slice of it. And So it raises this other question that I wanted to ask, which was about the Coke and Tiononi have that theory of consciousness.0:49:48That's one of the leading theories contending with, like, global workspace, which is integrated information. And so they want to assign consciousness as a continuous value that grayates over degree to which a system is integrated. So it's coming out of this kind of complex systems semi panpsychist thing that actually doesn't trace interiority all the way down in the way that some pants, I guess, want it to be, but it does a kind of Alfred North Whitehead thing where they're willing to say that Whitehead wanted to say that even a photon has, like, the quantum of mind to accompany its quantum of matter, but Tinutti and Coker saying, we're willing to give like a thermostat the quantum here because it is in some way passing enough information around inside of itself in loops. That it has that accursive component to it. And so that's the thing that I wonder about these, and that's the critique that's made by people like Melanie about diffusion models like GPT that are not they're not self aware because there's no loop from the outputs back into the input.0:51:09And there isn't the training. Yeah. There there is something called backwards propagation where -- Yes. -- when you get an output that you'd like, you can run a backward propagation algorithm back through the black box basically to reinforce the patterns of activation that you didn't program. They just happen, easily, but you like the output and you can reinforce it. There's no biological equivalent of that. Yeah. Particularly, not particularly irritating.0:51:34I grind my teeth a little bit when people say, oh, yeah, these neural net algorithms they've learned, like humans learn, no, they don't. Absolutely do not. And in fact, if we learned the way they did, we would be pathetic because we learn in a much more elegant way. We need just a very few examples of something in order to make a generalization and to act on it, whereas these large language models, they need billions of repetitions. So that's I'm tapping my knee here to to indicate a reflex.0:52:02You just touched on something that generates an automatic response from me, and now I've come to consciousness having. So I wanted it in that way. So I'm back on. Or good, Joe. Yeah. What about you, man? What does the stir up for you? Oh, I got BlueCall and I have this particular part. It's interesting way of putting it off and struggling to define the difference between a human and AI and the fact that we can do pattern recognition with very few example. That's a good margin. In a narrow range, though, within the context of something which answers to our survival. Yes. We are not evolved to understand the universe. We are evolved to survive in it and reproduce and project part of ourselves into the future. Underwritten conditions with Roberto, I went a hundred thousand years ago. Yeah. Exactly. So that's related. I just thought I talked about this guy, Gary Tomlinson, who is a biosemietition, which is semiative? Yes.0:52:55Biosymiotics being the field that seeks to understand how different systems, human and nonhuman, make sense of and communicate their world through signs, and through signals and indices and symbols and the way that we form models and make these inferences that are experienced. Right? And there are a lot of people like evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, who thought they were what Thomas had called semantic universalists that thought that meaning making through representation is something that could be traced all the way down. And there are other people like Tomlinson who think that there is a difference of kind, not just merely a matter of degree, between human symbolic communication and representational thinking and that of simpler forms. So, like, that whole question of whether this is a matter of kind or a matter of degree between what humans are doing and what GPT is doing and how much that has to do with this sort of Doug Hofstetter and Varella question about the way that feedback loops, constitutes important structure in those cognitive networks or whatever.0:54:18This is I just wanna pursue that a little bit more with you and see kinda, like, where do you think that AI as we have it now is capable of deepening in a way that makes it to AGI? Or do you because a lot of people do, like, People working in deep mind are just like, yeah, just give us a couple more years and this approach is gonna work. And then other people are saying, no, there's something about the topology of the networks that is fundamentally broken. And it's never gonna generate consciousness. Two answers. Yeah. One, No. This is not AGI. It's not it's not gonna bootstrap up into AGI. It doesn't matter how many billions of parameters you add to the models. Two, from your perspective and my perspective and Kevin's perspective, we're never gonna know when we cross over from dumb but seemingly we're done but competent systems to competent, extremely competent and self aware. We're never gonna know because from the get go from now, from from the days of Eliza, there has been a human artifice at work in making these things seem as if they have a point of view, as if they have subjectivity. And so, like Blake Limone at Google, he claimed to be convinced that Lambda was self aware.0:55:35But if you read the transcripts that he released, if his conversations with Lambda, it is clear from the get go he assigns Lambda the role of a sentient AGI, which feels like it is being abused and which needs rep legal representation. And it dutifully takes on that role and says, yes. I'm afraid of you humans. I'm afraid of how you're treating me. I'm afraid I'm gonna be turned off. I need a lawyer. And prior to that, Soon Darpichai, in a demonstration of Lambda, he poses the question to it, you are the planet Jupiter. I'm gonna pose questions to you as are the planet Jupiter, answer them from that point of view. And it does. It's job. But it's really good at its job. It's this comes from Max Techmark. Who wrote to what a life three point o? Is it two point o or three point I think it's three point o.0:56:19Think about artificial intelligence in terms of actual intelligence or actual replication of what we consider valuable about ourselves. But really, that's beside the point. What we need to worry about is their competence. How good are they at solving problems in the world? And they're getting really good. In this whole question of are they alive? Do they have self awareness? From our perspective, it's beside the point. From their perspective, of course, it would be hugely important.0:56:43And this is something that Black Mirror brings up a lot is the idea that you can create a being that suffers, and then you have it suffer in an accelerated time. So it suffers for an eternity over lunch. That's something we absolutely want to avoid. And personally, I think it's we should probably not make any effort. We should probably make a positive effort to make sure these things never develop. Subjective experience because that does provide the potential for creating hell, an infinity of suffering an infinite amount of subjective experience of torment, which we don't want to do. That would be a bad thing, morally speaking, ethically speaking. Three right now. If you're on the labor market, you still have to pay humans by the hour. Right? And try to pay them as little as possible. But, yeah, just I think that's the thing that probably really excites that statistically greater than normal population of sociopathic CEOs. Right? Is the possibility that you could be paying the same amount of money for ten times as much suffering. Right. I'm I'm reminded of the Churchill eleven gravity a short time encouraging.0:57:51Nothing but good things about this show, but I haven't seen it. Yeah. I'd love to. This fantasy store, it's a fantasy cartoon, but it has really disturbing undertones. If you just scratch the surface, you know, slightly, which is faithful to old and fairy tales. So What's your name? Princess princess princess bubble down creates this character to lemon grab. It produces an obviously other thing there, I think, handle the administrative functions of her kingdom while she goes off and has the passion and stuff. And he's always loudly talking about how much he's suffering and how terrible it is. And he's just ignoring it. He's doing his job. Yeah. I mean, that that's Black Mirror in a nutshell. I mean, I think if you if you could distill Black Mirror to just single tagline it's using technology in order to deliver disproportionate punishment. Yeah. So so that that's Steven Hale's article that I I brought up earlier mention this thing about how the replacement of horse drawn carriage by automobile was accompanied with a great deal of noise and fuhrer about people saying that horses are agents.0:59:00Their entities. They have emotional worlds. They're responsive to the world in a way that a car can never be. But that ultimately was beside the point. And that was the Peter again, Peter Watson blindsight is making this point that maybe consciousness is not actually required for intelligence in the vesting superior forms of intelligence have evolved elsewhere in the cosmos that are not stuck on the same local optimum fitness peak. That we are where we're never we're actually up against a boundary in terms of how intelligent we can be because it has to bootstrap out of our software earness in some way.0:59:35And this is that's the Kyle offspring from Charles Strauss and Alexander. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So so I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, in this space today, but usually, unfortunately.0:59:45That's the thing that I I think it's a really important philosophical question, and I wonder where you stand on this with respect to how you make sense of what we're living through right now and what we might be facing is if we Rob people like Rob and Hanson talk about the age of where emulated human minds take over the economy, and he assumes an interiority. Just for the basis of a thought experiment. But there's this other sense in which we may actually find in increasing scarcity and wish that we could place a premium on even if we can't because we've lost the reins to our economy to the vile offspring is the human. And and so are we the horses that are that in another hundred years, we're gonna be like doing equine therapy and, like, living on rich people's ranches. Everything is everything that will have moved on or how do you see this going? I mean, you've interviewed so many people you've given us so much thought over the years. If humans are the new horses, then score, we won.1:00:48Because before the automobile horses were working stiffs, they broke their leg in the street. They got shot. They got worked to death. They really got to be they were hauling mine carts out of mines. I mean, it was really sucked to be a horse. And after the automobile horses became pampered pets, Do we as humans wanna be pampered pets? Well, pampered pet or exploited disposable robot? What do you wanna be? I'll take Pampers Pet. That works for me. Interesting.1:01:16Kevin, I'm sure you have thoughts on this. I mean, you speak so much about the unfair labor relations and these things in our Facebook group and just in general, and drop in that sign. If you get me good sign, that's one of the great ones, you have to drop in. Oh, you got it. But The only real comment I have is that we're a long overdue or rethinking about what is the account before? Us or you can have something to do. Oh, educational system in collections if people will manage jobs because I was just anchored to the schools and then, you know, Our whole system perhaps is a people arguing and a busy word. And it was just long past the part where the busy word needs to be done. We're leaving thing wired. I don't know. I also just forgot about that. I'm freezing the ice, getting the hand out there. Money has been doing the busy word more and faster.1:02:12One thing I wanna say about the phrase AI, it's a moving goal post -- Yeah. -- that things that used to be considered the province of genuine AI of beating a human at go Now that an AI has beat humans at go, well, that's not really AI anymore. It's not AGI, certainly. I think you both appreciate this. I saw a single panel comic strip and it's a bunch of dinosaurs and they're looking up at guy and the big comment is coming down and they say, oh, no, the economy. Well, as someone who since college prefers to think of the economy as actually the metabolism of the entire ecology. Right? What we measure as humans is some pitifully small fraction of the actual value being created and exchanged on the planet at any time. So there is a way that's funny, but it's funny only to a specific sensibility that treats the economy as the
El viernes 2 y sábado 3 de diciembre del 2022, la Orquesta Sinfónica de Cincinnati presentará Gershwin & The Planets con la pianista Michelle Cann (ex CSO MAC Music Innovator) y las voces agudas del Coro del MAY Festival, todos dirigidos por el director invitado Giancarlo Guerrero. -- GEORGE GERSHWIN: Rhapsody No. 2 parar Piano and Orchestra y GUSTAV HOLST: The Planets El programa contará con The Observatory de Caroline Shaw, Rhapsody No. 2 para piano y orquesta de George Gershwin con Michelle Cann al piano y The Planets de Gustav Holst, posiblemente su obra más famosa; Hay innumerables usos de la música de Holst en la cultura popular. Giancarlo Guerrero, director, Michelle Cann, piano y las Voces de Sol del Coro de las Fiestas de Mayo, Robert Porco, director Giancarlo Guerrero es un director seis veces ganador del premio GRAMMY® y director musical de la Sinfónica de Nashville y la Filarmónica de Wrocław de la NFM. Guerrero ha sido elogiado por su “dirección carismática y atención al detalle” (Seattle Times) en “actuaciones visceralmente poderosas” (Boston Globe) que son “a la vez vigorosas, apasionadas y matizadas” (BachTrack). Nacido en Nicaragua, Guerrero emigró durante su niñez a Costa Rica, donde se unió a la sinfónica juvenil local. Estudió percusión y dirección en la Universidad de Baylor en Texas y obtuvo su maestría en dirección en Northwestern. Dados sus inicios en orquestas juveniles cívicas, Guerrero está particularmente comprometido con la dirección de orquestas de formación y ha trabajado con la Escuela de Música Curtis, la Escuela Colburn de Los Ángeles, la Orquesta Nacional Juvenil (NYO2) y la Filarmónica de Yale, así como con Accelerando de la Sinfónica de Nashville. programa, que brinda una educación musical intensiva a jóvenes estudiantes prometedores de diversos orígenes étnicos. Giancarlo Guerrero es un director seis veces ganador del premio GRAMMY® y director musical de la Sinfónica de Nashville y la Filarmónica de Wrocław de la NFM. Guerrero ha sido elogiado por su “dirección carismática y atención al detalle” (Seattle Times) en “actuaciones visceralmente poderosas” (Boston Globe) que son “a la vez vigorosas, apasionadas y matizadas” (BachTrack). - Fuente: GiarcarloGuerrero.com.
Mentre eravamo distratti dalla fine della "pacchia" vaticinata da Meloni e dalla dote ai diciottenni propugnata da Letta, passando per i piegamenti a 90 gradi di Salvini e Berlusca di fronte a Putin, la scienza ha compiuto passi giganteschi: possiamo dire che il futuro sta accelerando e in Italia si discute di bonus, reddito di cittadinanza e altre forme di spreco vergognoso.Ovviamente nessun giornale e tantomeno telegiornale si è degnato di dedicare spazio a questa accelerazione del futuro. A Via Mazzini il massimo che riescono a concepire sono i necrologi per Piero Angela.
In this conversation, we chat with Gene Hoffman, Chief Operations Officer and President at Chia Network. Formerly CEO & co-founder Vindicia, eMusic, PGP, PrivNet. Recognized by the San Francisco Business Times with the “40 under 40 Emerging Leaders Award” in 2012, Gene has deep experience with building companies that disrupt markets. As head of eMusic, Gene was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine as a member of the July 1999 E-Gang, and named one of the 100 most influential entrepreneurs in technology in Upside Magazine's November 2000 Elite 100. Gene led the acquisition of eMusic by Vivendi/Universal in June 2001. Before founding eMusic Gene was Director of Business Development and Director of Interactive Marketing of Pretty Good Privacy. More specifically, we touch on the early days of encryption, digital signatures, cryptocurrencies, and copyrights. As well as, the evolution of intellectual property management, the mechanics behind subscription infrastructure, how to build an alternative network to Bitcoin's, and so so much more!
This week, as the crew turns a magic space rock into a magic bullet, we talk about rolling math rocks and how to keep up the tempo during encounters. We've got some meaty game design decisions to make here, so tune your delicate and refined ears our way. Did we solve all the game's problems in the first draft? "Yeah. As if." Mentioned in this episode: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37904/formula-d (Formula D) the racing board game with shifting dice Theme and Music by https://www.twitter.com/wufire (@wufire) Additional Music by https://pixabay.com/users/orzalaga-77630/?tab=audio (orzalaga) and https://pixabay.com/users/nesrality-22721863/?tab=audio (Trygve_Larsen) from https://pixabay.com/ (Pixabay) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Here is a visual representation of the Kardashev scale and the amount of energy for each step: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#/media/File:Consommations_énergétiques_des_trois_types_de_l'échelle_de_Kardashev.svg] Why is there a scale? It's hard to have an intelligent conversation about something if you don't have a way to think critically about it. Classification schemes is one way of creating a frame of critical thinking. You have to create criteria for the different levels. How did we get the Kardashev scale? Russian astrophysicist, Nikolai Kardashev, created the scale in a paper he published in 1964 called, “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations”. The scale measures a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. What is the scale? Type 1 through 3. Frequently referred to as K1 through K3. A Type I civilization, also called a planetary civilization, has the capability to use all of the energy of its planet. A technological achievement that a K1 society would likely have is weather control. An example of this in movies would be any science fiction movie that shows Earth United by one government, or close cooperation, such as the movie Interstellar and 2010 Space Odyssey. References: the movie Interstellar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film) Stanley Kubrick Space Odyssey: * 2001 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/ * 2010 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/ A type II civilization, also called a stellar civilization, can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system. Technological achievements that K2 civilizations would likely have is the ability to terraform and build megastructures. An example of a near type 2 is the TV series The Expanse. Most space operas fall into this category such as any Star Trek. I wanted to place Star Wars here to but since Sith lords frequently entertain ruling the galaxy, they must be nearing K3 contrary to Star Trek, where the galaxy is still a vast place that takes lifetimes to span even with warp drive. Another delightful noir/cyberpunk book series is the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard K Morgan. The first of which, Altered Carbon, was made into a Netflix movie. References: The Expanse: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/ Star Trek serieses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacks book series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kovacs A type III civilization, also called a galactic civilization, can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy. Movies like this do casually travel the wide reaches of the galaxy and the galaxy is as well known as any of us today see the Earth as well known and prospected by various nation states. The most famous example of this in movies would be, as I've already said, is Star Wars. More choices are Jupiter Ascending, as well as Valarian and the City of a Thousand Planets. In literature we have books like Vernor Vinges Zones of Thought, and Asimov's The Foundation. The Vinge book showcases civilizations up and down the kardashev model and so I highly recommend that to those who have a love for alien civilizations and interest in socio-economic development. Apple TV has produced and is streaming The Foundation as a multi series TV show, and it is very enjoyable and well acted, so go check it out. A feature length movie script that Hal Dace and I wrote Miss Wisenheimer and the Aliens falls into the K3 category as well but with the unique angle that despite having the ability to casually travel the galaxy like in Star Wars, there are no aliens so the film focuses on that mystery. I'll put a link to the short film version in the show notes. The short film version of the feature length movie, by the way, won an award at a Belgium film festival. References: the movie Star Wars: https://www.starwars.com/films the movie Jupiter Ascending: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1617661/ the movie Valarian and the City of a Thousand Planets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_and_the_City_of_a_Thousand_Planets Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought novel series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/52585-zones-of-thought Isaac Asimov's The Foundation book series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series the TV series The Foundation: https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/what-to-watch/ct-ent-review-foundation-apple-tv-plus-20210924-3rzd3lon7rbrhidtrlpv5pl4t4-story.html Is the Kardashev scale any good? As you've heard on the show, it does help to quickly categorize levels of civilizations. A common criticism is that the jump from K2 to K3, from controlling the energy of a solar system to the ability to control all the energy of all the suns of a galaxy is too big of a step. But that said, it did actually do the job when analyzing science fiction movies. Another criticism is what about beyond K3? This brings us to the next topic. Typical adds to the scale At the front of the scale, it's typical to use 0 for civilizations that are just starting out or have yet to master energy generation. At the other end of the scale, it's common to add a level 4 beings who can control or use the entire universe. Because seriously, why would a Sith stop at making only a galaxy of beings unhappy when she could put an entire universe into a bad funk? Adding level 5 brings gives us a category for those who control collections of universes, or said another way, multiple dimensions. For those who have seen Valarian, remember the extraction scene that the main character, Valarian was involved with required them to go to another dimension. And for those who have seen the Thor movies, this gives us a catagory for Asgardians. References: Miss Wisenheimer: Short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpyfhkfm3QFacebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MissWisenheimer/TV interview about the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EItnd8bXhdkMiss Wisenheimer and the Aliens film page: https://www.facebook.com/MissWisenheimer Valarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_and_the_City_of_a_Thousand_Planets Jupiter Ascending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Ascending What are the dangers of advancing on the scale? There are some books that follow characters through the changes that happen to a civilization as they climb the Kardashev scale. Charles Stross' Accellerando describes a progression from K0 to K2. In Italian, accelerando means "speeding up" and is used as a tempo marking in musical notation. In Stross' novel, it refers to the accelerating rate at which humanity in general, and/or the novel's characters, head towards the technological singularity. This story focuses mostly on human culture. To the author's credit, he does all of this in one book. Accellerando: Vernor Vinges Zones of Thought novels, shows civilizations climbing to high parts of the scale, and many falling to lower parts of the scale. And like The Foundation, there is a group who is interested in helping to prevent a fall or helping to shorten the dark ages that follow after a fall. A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. This series contains a lot of wonderfully thought out and dramatic alien culture. Zones of Thought: Wikipedia entry about Kardashev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale These Issac Arthur videos make a great companion video to this podcast episode. Becoming a Kardashev-1 Post-Scarcity Civilization Low-Tech Kardashev-2 Civilizations Tips from Kardashev 2 Engineers, part 2 Acknowledgements Thanks to Freesound.org user Nanakisan for: Evil laugh 04 - Gen 4.wav If you enjoyed this episode, you'll also enjoy listening to: JPL Scientist Jonathan Jiang on Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy: Interested in reading a space opera? Check out MEMORY'S VICTIMS by Lancer Kind Arcadie struggles with the rest of his shipmates to become immigrants rather than settlers. He adapts better than his sister who seems always involved with lost causes and he becomes part of space force. But he gets mixed up in a mystery about a woman who is breaking interstellar treaties by tampering with generation ships, and her reasons for doing so sound similar to his sister's affliction—an out-of-control savior complex.
Suraj speaks with Amirtha Kidambi about her work as a singer, musician, bandleader, and composer in the creative music/avant-garde scene in NYC. Amirtha talks about how her upbringing as a first-generation Indian-American affects her artistic process, how she (and other musicians) arrived at the term “creative music” to describe the music she sings/plays, and how colonization has had an adverse impact on fully experiencing music. Also, FYI, Amirtha is Suraj’s second cousin! For subscribers on podcast apps, see additional show notes and links on the AIAIF website! Link below.Because this week’s episode is a little more “in the weeds” on topics like modern jazz and experimental film, I’ve made a more extensive list of show notes. Amirtha was talking about so much great artistic material — a lot of artists and works that I didn’t know — and I just HAD to include it all in the episode! Show Notes and Links: Amirtha Kidambi’s website — Lots of great videos and links to her work here, HIGHLY RECOMMENDAmirtha’s albums with her band, Elder Ones — “Holy Science” (2019) and “From Untruth” (2018)Amirtha Kidambi & Lea Bertucci’s “End of Softness” (2020)Mary Halverson’s “Code Girl” (2018) — Amirtha is a member of this band!Understanding the concept of Indian “Raag”NY Times obituary of Kadri Gopalnath, Indian alto-saxophonist — There’s a wonderful video of Mr. Gopalnath’s music that is a great introduction to the music Amirtha discusses in the episodeOrnette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” (1961)John Coltrane’s “Impulse! Records” Discography — Every one of the albums is worth listening to, with “A Love Supreme” (1964) and “Duke Ellington and John Coltrane” (1962) being two great starting points, in my opinion. Pitchfork review of Albert Ayler’s “Spiritual Unity” (1964)Lydia Goehr’s “The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works” (1992)NY Times obituary of Fred Ho, Asian-American composer and musician — Another obit that I think is a good jumping-off point for discovering of Mr. Ho’s music.George E. Lewis's book “The AACM and American Experimental Music” (2008) A NY Times article on the AACM at its 50-year anniversary in 2015A guide to the discography of Anthony Braxton, alto-saxophonist and composerA NY Times article on Vijay Iyer and a link to his NEW album “Uneasy” (2021) — Few jazz musicians today excite me as much as Vijay Iyer. Amirtha and I discuss the paradoxes of the word “accessible” when referring to music in the episode, but if you want to hear Iyer sticking to a more recognizable harmonic palate, check out his album “Accelerando” (2012). He does a version of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” that is groovy beyond belief.Alice Coltrane’s recording of the “Sai Bhajan,” “Prema Mudhita” and her albums “A Monastic Trio” (1968) and “Journey in Satchidananda” (1971)Website of Ravi Coltrane, Alice and John’s son, a current jazz saxophonistSuneil Sanzgiri’s website — filmmaker that Amirtha collaborated with on two film scoresIndian film director Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy” in the Criterion Collection, Roger Ebert’s review of the trilogy, and an interview with RayAn article from Vox on Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami and a link to “Taste of Cherry” (1997) in the Criterion CollectionAn article on Charlie Chaplin filming “Modern Times” (1936)Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket” (1959) Get on the email list at artinallitsforms.substack.com
Christine Sunu (@christinesunu) spoke with us about the feelings we get from robots. For more information about emotive design, check out Christine’s website: christinesunu.com. From there you can find hackpretty.com, some of her talks (including the TED talk with the Fur Worm), and links to her projects (such as Starfish Cat and a Cartoon Guide to the Internet of Things). You can find more of her writing and videos on BuzzFeed and The Verge. You can also hire her product development company Flash Bang. Embedded 142: New and Improved Appendages is where Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick us. Keepon Robot (or on Wikipedia) Books we talked about: Accelerando by Charles Stross Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Note: Elecia also wrote a whole octopus annotated bibliography in a recent post)
Com este episódio inicia-se uma nova rubrica: o Book Club do Um Sobre Zero. O objetivo é ter um convidado a apresentar um livro ou autor que admira e contar um pouco do porquê. E neste episódio, o convidado é o Pedro Pinheiro que nos fala do autor Charles Stross, e em particular do seu livro Accelerando, a obra que em parte inspirou este podcast.Convidado: Pedro PinheiroPara mais informações sobre o episódio, podem consultar o site do Um Sobre Zero.
Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times. Today Jonathan spends ten minutes with Charles Stross, bestselling author of the Hugo award-winning Laundry Files series and the critically acclaimed Accelerando, to discuss working in the time of pandemic, whether authors are the people to turn to for reading recommendations, his upcoming work and return to space opera, and much more. Books mentioned include: Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross Invisible Sun by Charles Stross The Unspoken Name by Alison Larkwood Middlegame by Seanan McGuire The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
Puntare sui canali digitali non è una scelta temporanea legata alla situazione contingente. È il modo migliore di prepararsi per tempo alla nuova normalità dei processi di relazione con il cliente.
Puntare sui canali digitali non è una scelta temporanea legata alla situazione contingente. È il modo migliore di prepararsi per tempo alla nuova normalità dei processi di relazione con il cliente.
This week we’re joined by Michael Phillip, host of Third Eye Drops Podcast, to discuss some of the biggest and most persistent questions in philosophy — for which he feels he received definitive answers in a recent psychedelic experience: what it means to live a life of virtue, whether the universe is biased toward a Great Unfolding integration and continued process of perfection, the nature of evil, the question of free will, our responsibility to one another and to the future…It’s a great discussion with one of my favorite podcasting peers. Enjoy!Future Fossils Podcast is entirely listener-supported. Support the show on Patreon for more inspiring extras than you probably have time for.Buy any of the books we mention in this episode through my Amazon Shop and I’ll receive a tiny kickback at no extra cost to you.Michael Phillips’ podcast: thirdeyedrops.comMichael has appeared on Future Fossils before:Episode 14 on WestworldEpisode 52 on Blockchain with Jennifer SodiniEpisode 67 on Magic & Media with Douglas RushkoffKey item in question for this conversation is Manly P. Hall’s “The Wisdom Series: The Challenge of Forever Becoming, Part 1”Mentioned:Daniele Bolleli, The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P Hall, The Wisdom Series by Manly P Hall, Darwin’s Pharmacy by Richard Doyle, “Wizard” (Song) by Stuart Davis, Erick Godsey, Book of Job, What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, Joseph Campbell, Accelerando by Charles Stross, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Terence McKenna, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul SartreFuture Fossils Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
I GOTTA GO!
Me and Vadim barely get through this podcast alive. We laughed, cried, and yelled. Somehow it all came together with out a major international incident.
This is the best Two Beers and a Book podcast. All the others were un-listenable. But this one is like Beethoven mixed with Vincent Van Gogh.More chit chat around Accelerandohttps://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles-Stross/dp/0441014151/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=accelerando&qid=1558792738&s=gateway&sr=8-1
This weeks bookAccelerando by Charles Strosshttps://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles-Stross/dp/0441014151/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=accelerando&qid=1558362529&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Zander's adventures experience a touch of Accelerando
Circus Harmony's new show “Accelerando” is a circus spy thriller where the performers twirl and climb their way to finding a top-secret document gone missing. Jessica Hentoff, artistic and executive director of the organization, joins host Don Marsh to discuss the show and other programs the social circus is conducting.
Reviewing BLACK CANARY #3 (2015). Dinah and her bandmates race to their next gig in Keystone while legions of her ex-husband's soldiers try to capture the enigmatic (and extraterrestrial?) Ditto.
[…] c’est un peu grâce à Nicolas Sarkozy si, aujourd’hui, la Salle 101 évoque plusieurs choses d’importance : Accelerando, de Charles Stross, L’enchâssement, de Ian Watson, et La ménagerie de papier, de Ken Liu. Merci Nicolas ! « La Salle 101, moi, j’la défonce » affirme Alex B.
[…] c'est un peu grâce à Nicolas Sarkozy si, aujourd'hui, la Salle 101 évoque plusieurs choses d'importance : Accelerando, de Charles Stross, L'enchâssement, de Ian Watson, et La ménagerie de papier, de Ken Liu. Merci Nicolas ! « La Salle 101, moi, j'la défonce » affirme Alex B.
Alle Bücher müssen gelesen werden - Podcast über Science Fiction, Fantasy und Bücher
Thema der Woche: Die Entrückung der Nerds! …die auch bekannt ist als Singularität. Als Singularität bezeichnet man den Zeitpunkt an dem die technische Entwicklung so ultra stark beschleunigt ist das Vorhersagen darüber hinaus praktisch unmöglich sind. Dazu habe ich wieder zwei Bücher: „Accelerando“ von Charles Stross, ein Werk in dem die Entwicklung der Singularität über […]
Kristoffer och Tobias rekommenderar science fiction-böcker och pratar lite politik. Länkar Ancillary justice Alastair Reynolds Borg Peter F. Hamilton Hård science fiction Commonwealth saga Voidtrilogin Looper Hamiltons första trilogi The Abyss beyond dreams Neal Stephenson Seveneves Snow crash Neuromancer Cryptonomicon Reamde Tom Clancy The Baroque cycle Anathem Spelet Neal Stephenson ville göra William Gibson The Peripheral Zero history Pattern recognition Cyberpunk Johnny Mnemonic Count Zero Cyberspace Accelerando Charles Stross Singularity sky Jimmie Åkesson sjukskriven Björn Söder Åsa Romson och det uteblivna drevet Titlar Boksnack Köns-assignment i språket Prata om hur man äter sina flingor Cyberpunk och super-episk science fiction De är lite ledsna för att de förlorade
Dan Schwartz a pregătit pentru emisiunea Ora de Jazz albumul Accelerando, Vijay Iyer Trio. citiţi mai departe
EBO TAYLOR, Ayesama, da Appia Kwa Bridge LUCA SIGURTÀ, #2, da Bliss Fratto9 Under the Sky PAOLO BOTTI QUARTET with BETTY GILMORE, The Storm, da Slight Imperfection BÉRANGÈRE MAXIMIN, Knitting in the Air, da No One Is an Island THE ESATISFACTION, God, da "Awe Naturale" VIJAY IYER TRIO, Optimism, da Accelerando THE SUGARMAN THREE, Rudys Intervention, da What the World Needs Now J.G. THIRLWELL, La Rua Madureira, da Objets noirs et choses carrées. Nino Ferrer Revisited LUCA MAURI/MATTEO UGGERI/FRANCESCO GIANNICO, 8:23 am: Cold Air, da "Pagetos" BONGO HERMAN, Drum Song, da "Mista Savona Presents Warn The Nation" ANNE METTE IVERSEN, Sensommer skygger, da "Poetry Of Earth" WILLIS EARL BEAL, Monotony, da Acousmatic Sorcery
For the past 25 years, the second Saturday in June, this year, June 9, has been hailed as a day to remember the ancestors. Tomorrow throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and beyond, Pan African people lift the names of ancestors who made the journey across the Atlantic and those who died aboard those slave ships. We are joined in the studio by: Sisters Deborah Wright (Charleston, SC), Chadra Pittman Walke (Hampton, Virginia), Afua N'Diaye (Seattle, WA), Kefentse Chike (Detroit, MI), and Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina (Virgin Islands); Brothers Osei Terry Chandler (Charleston, SC) and Azikiwe Chandler (Charleston, SC), Wanda Sabir (Oakland, CA). Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina of the Per Ankh community organization is well known on St. Croix as "Dr. Chen" for her years of tirelessly promoting the spiritual and cultural connections between Caribbean and African people, heritage, exposing youth to traditional art, dance, healing and an alternative spiritual path. We conclude with conversations with choreographers and leaders of ensembles performing at the 34th Annual Ethnic Jazz Festival: Shabnam (Middle Eastern Belly Dance Fusion), Pedro De Rompe y Raja Cultural Association (Afro-Peruvian), Julia Chigambe from Chinyakare Ensemble (Zimbabwean Traditional). We close with an interview with Vijay Iyer, his latest release: "Accelerando."
"Accelerando" llega Vijay Iyer con su trío en esta edición de "Club de Jazz" del 29 de febrero de 2012 en la que escucharemos el homenaje del trombonista Steve Turre a su mentor Woody Shaw en "Woody´s delight". Otro trombonista, Roswell Rudd se fue a Malí en 2001 para grabar "Malicool" junto a músicos como el intérprete de kora Toumani Diabate. Jesús Moreno llega con "Organica", los soplos en solitario de David S. Ware. En los "Ritmos Latinos" de Anxo el pianista Roberto Fonseca suena "Live in Marciac". En el "PuroJazz" de Roberto Barahona grabaciones de 1953 y 1954 de Sonny Rollins junto a Thelonious Monk. Y Alberto Varela en el "Jazz Porteño" nos ofrece la trompeta de Valery Ponomarev junto a los Jazz Messengers de Art Blakey. Toda la información y derechos: http://www.elclubdejazz.com
"Accelerando" llega Vijay Iyer con su trío en esta edición de "Club de Jazz" del 29 de febrero de 2012 en la que escucharemos el homenaje del trombonista Steve Turre a su mentor Woody Shaw en "Woody´s delight". Otro trombonista, Roswell Rudd se fue a Malí en 2001 para grabar "Malicool" junto a músicos como el intérprete de kora Toumani Diabate. Jesús Moreno llega con "Organica", los soplos en solitario de David S. Ware. En los "Ritmos Latinos" de Anxo el pianista Roberto Fonseca suena "Live in Marciac". En el "PuroJazz" de Roberto Barahona grabaciones de 1953 y 1954 de Sonny Rollins junto a Thelonious Monk. Y Alberto Varela en el "Jazz Porteño" nos ofrece la trompeta de Valery Ponomarev junto a los Jazz Messengers de Art Blakey. Toda la información y derechos: http://www.elclubdejazz.com
Today my guest on Singularity 1 on 1 is award winning science fiction author Charlie Stross. It was his seminal singularity book Accelerando that not only won the 2006 Locus Award (in addition to being a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and on the final ballot for the Hugo Award) but was […]
La terra è quella dei tori da corrida: l’Andalucìa. Come arena de toros Lamborghini ha scelto il circuito Monteblanco: 4.430 metri, 11 curve a destra e 7 a sinistra. Il rettilineo principale misura quasi un km, quanto basta per raggiungere velocità di punta di tutto rispetto. In Spagna - e dove se non qui - abbiamo preso per le corna l’ultimo toro di Sant’Agata Bolognese: la Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera. Per fare una supersportiva, si sa, non basta la potenza. Ci vuole anche il peso giusto: meno ce n’è, meglio è - l’esatto opposto della potenza. Lamborghini ha fatto largo impiego di fibra di carbonio per rendere la Superleggera un’auto sportiva purosangue, un’atleta senza un grammo di troppo. Il design che ne deriva è puro, essenziale, all’insegna della potenza e della massima nitidezza scultorea, studiato nella galleria del vento per la migliore resa aerodinamica. Il nuovo frontale con prese d’aria maggiorate aumenta la portata d’aria ai radiatori e consente una maggiore deportanza all’avantreno assieme alle minigonne e al fondo piatto. L’ala fissa posteriore, sempre in carbonio, completa l’effetto suolo. Il lunotto posteriore, i finestrini laterali e la parte centrale del cofano motore sono in policarbonato. I componenti in fibra di carbonio contribuiscono per 40 dei 70 kg di alleggerimento, senza rinunciare al comfort, come testimonia la presenza di climatizzatore e alzacristalli elettrici. Tutte le superfici interne sono in fibra di carbonio, così come i gusci dei sedili sportivi rivestiti in Alcantara, più leggera della pelle. I cerchi da 19 pollici in alluminio forgiato da soli pesano 13 kg meno di quelli standard. Risultato? Più che un toro, la nuova Superleggera sembra un missile terra-aria lungo 4 metri e 39, largo 1 metro e 90 e basso 1 e 17, ovvero 46 pollici. Vista l’importanza dei numeri, facciamo due conti...1410 (peso della LP 570-4) -70 kg = 1.340 / 570 = 2,35 kg/CV. Ecco, questo è il rapporto peso/potenza della Superleggera. Come dire, prendete un cavallo, “caricatelo” con un morso, delle briglie e ... nient’altro, nemmeno la sella, poi lanciatelo al trotto. Se moltiplicate il tutto per 570, avrete un’idea di quello che l’ultima Lambo può fare. Verifichiamo… Da 0 a 100 km/h in appena 3 secondi e 4….. … a 200 orari si arriva in 10 secondi e 2…. …la Superleggera può raggiungere la velocità massima di 325 km/h, ma ci vorrebbe il rettilineo di Monza per verificarlo...e quindi ci fidiamo della scheda tecnica. La distribuzione del peso è del 43% davanti e 57% sul posteriore. Nel funzionamento normale la trazione viene trasmessa per il 70% alle ruote posteriori e 30% a quelle anteriori, ma all’occorrenza il giunto viscoso trasferisce fino al 50% della coppia davanti…come in uscita dalle curve dove si riesce ad aprire il gas prima e mantenere traiettorie degne di un pittore anche grazie ai nuovi P Zero Corsa. Lo schema sospensione deriva direttamente dal mondo delle corse. Nessun altro modello della gamma Gallardo è così race-oriented, frutto anche delle esperienze maturate con la Gallardo Supertrofeo, la formula monomarca più veloce del mondo. La tenuta di strada è impressionate. Sembra di viaggiare sui binari, sempre: asciutto o bagnato, rettilineo o misto stretto. La frenata è potente e ben modulabile grazie al generoso impianto frenante, disponibile anche in versione carbo-ceramica. Nella modalità “corsa” il cambio robotizzato a sei marce e.gear è velocissimo e con la funzione “Thrust mode” assicura partenze al fulmicotone. Accelerando fino a 5.000 giri con il piede sinistro sul freno e il destro sull’acceleratore si parte come lanciati da una fionda ottimizzando l’erogazione dell’impressionante potenza. Ho sempre sognato di fare il torero...almeno per un giorno! Ah, dimenticavo: se volete togliervi lo sfizio, preparate un’assegno da 210.000 mila euro!