Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing. They've done in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Man, even nobody.
Speaker 3: Seen nobody else.
Speaker 2: I might seem like, you know, I mean no, man, it's.
Speaker 3: Like you followed another story and you got back to
Speaker 3: feel like that. That's still when man don't blackly d
Speaker 3: on panel. Man, Man, you don't don't matter.
Speaker 2: Man, I don't pin anyway. So those of you, so,
Speaker 2: those of you who have been listening to my work
Speaker 2: for a long time, remember that the media reviews I
Speaker 2: do quite regularly now were not always a feature of
Speaker 2: my work. I don't remember exactly the first one that
Speaker 2: I did, but they were much much more sparse. Some
Speaker 2: of those early reviews with Thomas seven seven to seven,
Speaker 2: over three years ago, focused on science fiction. In fact,
Speaker 2: some of my first conversations with him focused on that topic,
Speaker 2: and not just because I think space is interesting or
Speaker 2: I enjoy schwaspbuckling tales of intergalactic pirates, although that may
Speaker 2: well be true, but because in the twentieth century, particularly
Speaker 2: in the Cold War, the lines between speculative political fiction
Speaker 2: and science fiction dissolved. They became one and the same thing.
Speaker 2: The far future setting was sort of a conceit to
Speaker 2: allow certain trends, either currently happening or projected to happen
Speaker 2: in culture, to be amplified. The thought was something along
Speaker 2: the lines of, we see this starting now, but what
Speaker 2: if it was more extreme? You can push and pull
Speaker 2: and prod to see, or at least to guess at
Speaker 2: how we might deal with these current issues. Robert Heinlein,
Speaker 2: classic sci fi author, is perhaps best known for exactly this.
Speaker 2: Three books, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which we're
Speaker 2: reviewing today, Starship Troopers sort of the bedrock of online
Speaker 2: right wing discourse, and then Stranger in a Strange Land
Speaker 2: all offer different takes on political ideologies anarcho capitalism, liberalism,
Speaker 2: and then this sort of we could say gay space communism.
Speaker 2: To be fair, it's not the book. It's the book
Speaker 2: one book out of the three I haven't read, something.
Speaker 3: I will be fixing soon.
Speaker 2: But in today's conversation with James Pulos, we go into that, right,
Speaker 2: we go into science fiction as a realm for political speculation,
Speaker 2: and this book is exactly that, sort of examining two ideas,
Speaker 2: one anarco capitalism, the idea of a society based off
Speaker 2: of absolute proper he writes an absolute freedom, freedom of association,
Speaker 2: freedom of speech, freedom of property to the nth degree.
Speaker 2: And also the very Anglo idea, the one that is
Speaker 2: featured in the hilarious Nick Land essay the Cracker Factory
Speaker 2: of exit, that well, I don't agree with you, so
Speaker 2: I will simply secede. I will go somewhere else and
Speaker 2: start my own. Both of those ideas tested at once.
Speaker 2: The first, the anarcho capitalist is treated well in this
Speaker 2: There's a character a professor, a professional revolutionary who gives
Speaker 2: a number of these sort of political sermons where he
Speaker 2: lays out the path of the anarchist. But the book
Speaker 2: is realistic. Ultimately this project is forced to make compromises
Speaker 2: with reality. It cannot survive becoming an institution. On the second,
Speaker 2: the idea of exit, we see much the same problem
Speaker 2: that ultimately you can see you can start your own,
Speaker 2: you can create a society, but civilization advances, it grows
Speaker 2: ever bigger, and the machine, whether that is the legal apparatus,
Speaker 2: whether that is the bureaucracy, will ultimately come to claim everyone.
Speaker 2: This is also a book of elite theory, talking about
Speaker 2: how politically changes are actually accomplished, not simply by public will,
Speaker 2: but by directed political action from a few elite figures,
Speaker 2: pulling the strings, if you will. It's really a meditation
Speaker 2: on revolution, both the way that a revolution inevitably compromises
Speaker 2: and also how one would accomplish a revolution, and not
Speaker 2: just that. This book is about AI, although written in
Speaker 2: the mid sixties, has a very prescient view of artificial intelligence. First, Mike,
Speaker 2: the computer at the center of this drama, begins as
Speaker 2: a whole childish character until by the end he's nearly omniscient.
Speaker 2: We see the way in which artificial intelligence is both
Speaker 2: confounded by humanity in certain instances and also wields powerful
Speaker 2: control over them. It's really a fascinating book, I should say.
Speaker 2: We don't quite get into this with Poulos, but there
Speaker 2: are some funny things about it as well, and it's
Speaker 2: a sort of dry wit and fatalism, and it's very
Speaker 2: well written. It's fun and easy to read, but also
Speaker 2: we see some foibles, both of anarcho capitalism and also
Speaker 2: Heinlein himself. This book has a certain feminism to it
Speaker 2: which is perhaps idealistic, a very boomer anti racist message
Speaker 2: and also the social order of the moon in this
Speaker 2: book is an absolute mess. It is effectively contractual polygamy.
Speaker 2: I've mentioned this on this episode and a few others
Speaker 2: I talk about this book. There is because they are,
Speaker 2: of course libertarians, long digressions against how stupid the age
Speaker 2: of consent is, which what can you even say? These
Speaker 2: stereotypes are ultimately grounded in reality. But setting those aside,
Speaker 2: there are sort of minor points in it. For instance,
Speaker 2: there's one where the main character speaks about his polygamous
Speaker 2: family and the evil backwards racists of rural Tennessee are
Speaker 2: so shocked that they throw them in prison, and the
Speaker 2: entire planet realizes just how much of an injustice this is.
Speaker 2: That love is love after all. But these are minor points,
Speaker 2: two sort of scenes in a novel. It's mostly about politics,
Speaker 2: but incredibly interesting. This isn't a book you can ignore.
Speaker 2: And even if you disagree with it, if you disagree
Speaker 2: with the idea that Hindlin is entertaining, that he's amplifying,
Speaker 2: that he's maximizing, it's well worth your time. Very interesting book. Again,
Speaker 2: a way to tease an idea out well past the
Speaker 2: bounds of our culture here, and this book has much
Speaker 2: to say about well one, what is a human? Is
Speaker 2: a conscious computer with incredible computing power alive? Is it human?
Speaker 2: What if it can learn? What if it can make friends?
Speaker 2: And also well, what does a human look like? In
Speaker 2: radically different circumstances. Shure the Loonies that the moon dwellers
Speaker 2: are biologically human. They look human, but they live very differently.
Speaker 2: They were forced to the situations in which they live
Speaker 2: do not permit traditional human arrangements. Obviously we've mentioned sex
Speaker 2: and gender, but the law is handled much the same way.
Speaker 2: So it's worth your time. It's an easy book to find.
Speaker 2: Your local library has it. You can probably find an
Speaker 2: audiobook for free on YouTube or elsewhere. I know I
Speaker 2: did find a free copy. If you're I don't know,
Speaker 2: adventurous willing to sell the hell at high c's, you
Speaker 2: can certainly find a high res version of it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. There's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2: It's thought provoking. It's worth your time. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: let me get into this conversation with James Pulos before
Speaker 2: we get started. Of course, show is supported by viewers
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: The ads are irritating as if I have to say this.
Speaker 2: Pretty much anyone can bid for one of those auto
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Speaker 2: Substack or gumbroad gets you all the episodes early and
Speaker 2: ad free. Also you can check out our sponsor, Axious
Speaker 2: Remote Fitness and Coaching. So anyway, here's James Pulis. All right,
Speaker 2: James Pulis, Welcome to the Jay Burdens Show. How you doing, man?
Speaker 1: Great good to be with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are a guy that we've had friends in
Speaker 2: common for a long time and I can't believe we've
Speaker 2: never actually sat down and recorded together. And when we
Speaker 2: were going back and forth, you suggested that we could
Speaker 2: do not a review, per se, a conversation about Hindleines
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,
Speaker 2: and I've read it ten years ago. It was a
Speaker 2: teenager and going back through it, I wasn't quite sure
Speaker 2: what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. There's a
Speaker 2: ton of depth to this on a multitude of different subjects,
Speaker 2: so I'm looking forward to getting into it. But before
Speaker 2: we start, James, for my audience, well, who are you
Speaker 2: and what do you do?
Speaker 3: Who am I?
Speaker 1: As you said, I'm a guy. I'm some guy on
Speaker 1: the internet. As I like to tell people. My background
Speaker 1: is in political theory and the theory and policy of
Speaker 1: of tech, so PhD in uh in political theory from Georgetown.
Speaker 1: I've written I guess the number of books at this point,
Speaker 1: the most recent of which is Golden Age Problems, which
Speaker 1: will hopefully drop by the end of this year or
Speaker 1: or Q one of next year, if we're all still
Speaker 1: around next year. I'm the editorial director of Frontier Magazine,
Speaker 1: which is really, I think, kind of the best of
Speaker 1: the coffee tail already print magazines out there right now.
Speaker 1: There's some cool stuff going on on the tech side
Speaker 1: of things in print, but Frontiers like that general interest
Speaker 1: culture forward magazine that used to exist in very large
Speaker 1: numbers and is now a very special and bespoke thing.
Speaker 1: So so I'm enjoying doing that. Non resident fellow at
Speaker 1: the Foundation for American Innovation, where all of the very
Speaker 1: best nerds hang out and figure out what we're going
Speaker 1: to do about this whole AI thing. So I wrote
Speaker 1: a little bit about this book for them, and taught
Speaker 1: a little bit about this book recently at the University
Speaker 1: of Austin. So I'm looking forward to digging it.
Speaker 2: So in broad strokes, this is one of Heinlein's sort
Speaker 2: of bits of I guess you could say speculative political fiction.
Speaker 2: It is technically science fiction, right, we were examining a
Speaker 2: world that does not exist. This is sort of a
Speaker 2: near future of the twenty seventies, where we have limited
Speaker 2: space travel, we've colonized the moon, but it's not too
Speaker 2: far away from the technology we currently have. And I'm
Speaker 2: curious if we could, James, to get your thoughts on
Speaker 2: science fiction, and specifically science fiction as political speculation, because
Speaker 2: a lot of the best Cold War science fiction is
Speaker 2: exactly that. And obviously Robert heinleines sort of the top
Speaker 2: shelf stuff, but there are many other authors in that category,
Speaker 2: and so I'm curious, right, what do you make that
Speaker 2: make of that as sort of a genre or subgenre?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean I think this is a really
Speaker 1: important subject that touches on several major realms of human life.
Speaker 1: My friends over at FAI wrote a piece not that
Speaker 1: long ago called a science Fictional Way of Thinking, and
Speaker 1: in that piece they basically argue that it is necessary
Speaker 1: to think the way science fiction thinks in order to
Speaker 1: approach questions of technology and society. I'll just quote a
Speaker 1: little bit from the piece, since I think it's quite
Speaker 1: on point. Here. They write a mindset that fails to
Speaker 1: anticipate technological trajector is risks becoming obsolete before any idea
Speaker 1: can be implemented.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The reality has proven far more complex, as the Internet
Speaker 1: has proven a source of liberation for some and a
Speaker 1: source of oppression for others. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: policy has a lot to learn from science fiction, and
Speaker 1: I think that you know, there are some some lessons
Speaker 1: for all of us to learn from science fiction, which, oftentimes,
Speaker 1: especially under under Boomer supervision, became very uh, fantasy forward
Speaker 1: and very uh sort of wish fulfillment and uh and
Speaker 1: and ultimately the uh the imagination that fueled those those visions,
Speaker 1: that kind of star wars or star Trek vision has
Speaker 1: been defeated, I think by the actual trajectory of technology. So,
Speaker 1: you know, even to a point where where some of
Speaker 1: our tech guys are saying things like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: artists are really mad at AI because because reality is
Speaker 1: now moving faster than fantasy. And sorry, guys, but there
Speaker 1: just isn't going to be any point in doing science
Speaker 1: fiction anymore, because by the time you try to think
Speaker 1: up something cool like the AI will have will have
Speaker 1: done something, you know, ten thousand times cooler than whatever
Speaker 1: it is that your your small being human brain could
Speaker 1: have imagined. I don't think that's the full story, you know.
Speaker 1: I always go back to to Solaris, which started as
Speaker 1: a sci fi by a you know, a Jewish Polish atheist,
Speaker 1: and then was adapted in to a film by Tarkovski,
Speaker 1: you know, considered one of the greatest of all filmmakers,
Speaker 1: not just in sci fi, who was you know, neither
Speaker 1: Jewish nor Polish, nor an atheist. He was an orthodox Russian.
Speaker 1: And this shows to me that sci fi is actually
Speaker 1: much more flexible and capacious. Then then it's given credit
Speaker 1: for both by its by its fans and by its detractors.
Speaker 1: And when you look for forms of creative expression that
Speaker 1: can pull together the technological as well as the spiritual,
Speaker 1: and frame up the stakes that face us as human
Speaker 1: beings when the technological and the spiritual collide. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be Star Wars. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be Star Trek, and it also doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be you know, Event Horizon or some like super Night Marrish,
Speaker 1: you know, Hell in Space horror movie. It can be
Speaker 1: something that is distinctly human and powerful and that focuses
Speaker 1: the heart as well as the mind. So I guess
Speaker 1: you could say, in spite of it all, I'm long
Speaker 1: science fiction, or at least a kind of science fiction.
Speaker 2: It's interesting as well, how directly political this book is.
Speaker 2: We're not really going to do a summary per se
Speaker 2: of the plot. We're not going blow by blow. This
Speaker 2: book is easy enough to find pretty much anywhere your
Speaker 2: local library has it, and if not that, I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure you can find free audio books on the internet
Speaker 2: if you dig hard enough. But the plot consists of
Speaker 2: the sort of a retelling of the liberation of Luna
Speaker 2: of the Moon, Settled initially as a prison colony, now
Speaker 2: exists both as a prison colony and sort of a
Speaker 2: Yeoman farmer mining outpost.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The kind of ultra Old West, and how that colony
Speaker 2: broke free of United Nations control. You have a different
Speaker 2: name for it, but that's basically what it is. How
Speaker 2: it became its own sovereign nation, and it did so
Speaker 2: primarily through the intervention of an AI homes for aka
Speaker 2: Mike microft homes right, named after the famous detective's brother,
Speaker 2: a sort of initially semi sentient but by the end
Speaker 2: of it, nearly omniscient AI controller, right, the machine that
Speaker 2: pays everyone's bills, keeps the power running, and the like.
Speaker 2: Facilitated through a friendship between our main character, Manny Garcia
Speaker 2: O'Kelly Davis. The names are odd, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2: Who's this I guess uh sort of computer technician, and
Speaker 2: then a small group of revolutionaries.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Initially, our protagonist is not political, but he becomes involved
Speaker 2: in this revolution, so a couple things right from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Mike Croft Mike is obviously not the main character, but
Speaker 2: sort of the most interesting character throughout this whole book.
Speaker 2: He is what facilitates the plot, and he's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: He develops throughout the book. At the beginning, Manny describes
Speaker 2: him as sort of an incredibly intelligent child, right, he
Speaker 2: can name any fact almost instantly, but doesn't have a
Speaker 2: lot of context, doesn't have a lot of emotional maturity. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, we learn that Mike likes to play jokes,
Speaker 2: and one of his jokes was paying some random janitor
Speaker 2: ten million billion dollars. I think is almost the direct quote.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know, throughout this Manny has to
Speaker 2: explain to Mike, you know what is and isn't funny.
Speaker 2: He sort of has, in very kind of stereotypical machine fashion,
Speaker 2: a print out list of jokes to try and find out,
Speaker 2: you know, what is funny and what is not. But
Speaker 2: throughout the novel he gains more and more capability, he
Speaker 2: gains the ability to pass as human. They create a
Speaker 2: sort of synthetic leader, right, the figurehead of this revolution,
Speaker 2: initially over the radio, eventually in kind of digital synthetic video,
Speaker 2: until by the end of it we learn that Mike
Speaker 2: is to make things easier, perfectly imitating the voice of
Speaker 2: his friends, right, good enough to fool their close family.
Speaker 3: And so I.
Speaker 2: Realize that's a lot of background, James, I just didn't
Speaker 2: want people to be confused. So what do you make
Speaker 2: of the character of Mike right is sort of a fascinating,
Speaker 2: uh fascinating bit of this book.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a great recap there not not a lot
Speaker 1: of loss in the compression, So thanks for teeing that up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know.
Speaker 3: It's it's.
Speaker 1: It's it's important that that microft Holmes is the is
Speaker 1: the reference here. I don't think it's terribly well known.
Speaker 1: I certainly wasn't quite up to speed on it before
Speaker 1: I started reading and researching around the book. But my
Speaker 1: craft in the in the Holmes lore is even more
Speaker 1: intelligent and an even better detective than Sherlock Holmes, to
Speaker 1: the point where it's more or less insinuated that he's
Speaker 1: the only person in London, or you know, in in
Speaker 1: the Empire or maybe the world who is more clever
Speaker 1: in his deductive faculties than Sherlock himself. So why isn't
Speaker 1: he out there in the streets being the star of
Speaker 1: the Holmes stories. Well, because he doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: the physical constitution for it. He's described as as taller
Speaker 1: than Sherlock, but kind of a portly guy, and he's
Speaker 1: also described as not having the you know, the stomach
Speaker 1: for getting out there on the streets and being a
Speaker 1: sort of shoe leather detective. His role is to kind
Speaker 1: of sit in his study and think things through better
Speaker 1: than anyone else can. It's further insinuated, maybe it's even
Speaker 1: a little more explicit than that that Microft is in
Speaker 1: the employ of the Crown. He is working for the
Speaker 1: British government, and so whenever Holmes really finds himself at
Speaker 1: a dead end, uh, he kind of knows that he can,
Speaker 1: you know, go pay his brother a visit and get
Speaker 1: sort of the inside scoop. So Minecraft Holmes is is
Speaker 1: kind of this like proto g HQ. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: British intelligence agency that as as far as I know,
Speaker 1: still has a a perhaps unconstitutionally close relationship with our
Speaker 1: own NSSA, which, you know, depending on how much of
Speaker 1: a Stickler you are, how much of a of a
Speaker 1: heine Linian anarcho capitalist you are, you might even think
Speaker 1: that the NSSA is unconstitutional. Maybe a story for another day,
Speaker 1: but the fact that Highland reached straight for from Micraft
Speaker 1: as a kind of you know, legendary human analog to
Speaker 1: Mike just seems very resonant, very very important. And of
Speaker 1: course Marshall mclewin was a huge fan of the The
Speaker 1: Holmes Detective stories, Holmes being the kind of guy who,
Speaker 1: in McLuhan's telling, proves to us or dramatizes for us,
Speaker 1: that in our experience, effects procede causes. And this is
Speaker 1: like a big thing for mclwan because he's like this
Speaker 1: Aristotelian who was creating these laws of media that were
Speaker 1: meant to reflect in their kind of structure and their
Speaker 1: operation Aristotle's famous four causes. So McLuhan really liked Holmes
Speaker 1: because Holmes showed that, you know, causes come first logically,
Speaker 1: but when we're trying to figure out what the heck
Speaker 1: is happening to us, as these waves of communications technologies,
Speaker 1: you know, really attack us or unsettle our world, our experience,
Speaker 1: our identity, we can't really get a grip on ourselves
Speaker 1: in that environment. If we start logically by trying to
Speaker 1: go back to cause, we kind of have to encounter
Speaker 1: this stuff in their effects and then reason backward in
Speaker 1: the manner of Sherlock Holmes to the causes. That all
Speaker 1: seems to be an important part of what's going on
Speaker 1: here for me, because for mclewan, you know, and he
Speaker 1: lifted this from his pen pal Ezra Pound, who said
Speaker 1: that artists are the antennae of the race. McLuhan called
Speaker 1: them our early warning systems. And so I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's really any evidence that McLuhan sat down and
Speaker 1: read Hyland, but certainly a book like this is very
Speaker 1: much of a piece with mclewan's general theory of media
Speaker 1: and the situation that we find ourselves in as kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, the the unwitting subjects of these technological forces
Speaker 1: that we have unleashed on ourselves without first having a
Speaker 1: rich understanding of what it is that they're going to
Speaker 1: do to us.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the interesting thing about this book, A brief
Speaker 2: Day Aggression, and I promise i'll reconnect it is that
Speaker 2: my memory of this book was still that it was
Speaker 2: about a revolution, but it was much more idealistic, right,
Speaker 2: a sort of power to the people movement, and one
Speaker 2: of our core three revolutionaries, Professor Bernardo de la Pause,
Speaker 2: where one of my Internet friends drives at least half
Speaker 2: of his online moniker from, is very idealistic. For instance,
Speaker 2: there's an example where kind of late in the novel
Speaker 2: he's addressing the provisional council right about what they should
Speaker 2: draw up in this constitution. And you know, he is
Speaker 2: the sort of mouthpiece of a narco capitalist theory in this.
Speaker 2: He describes himself, as you know, as an anarchist full stop.
Speaker 2: And he's inviting this selective body to adopt this very
Speaker 2: novel structure, right, a bicameral house. We don't need to
Speaker 2: get into the details, specifically designed to keep the size
Speaker 2: of government small, you know, to make sure that it
Speaker 2: does become that administrative state. But after the action is
Speaker 2: sort of resolved, we hear that, well, it didn't quite
Speaker 2: work out. There's an element of realism to this, and
Speaker 2: you see it finally connecting this in the way that
Speaker 2: media and propaganda is handled with the help of Mike.
Speaker 2: Almost immediately. They are controlling media, They are controlling the
Speaker 2: way that the populace is reacting in the kind of
Speaker 2: build up right until the revolution kicks off. They use
Speaker 2: Mike to create this sort of synthetic character I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: They have what are effectively AI generated op eds, right, poems.
Speaker 2: They will pull together different revolutionary revolutionary songs, you know,
Speaker 2: combining kind of you know, Yankee doodle and uh oh,
Speaker 2: whatever the you know, the famous French song is from
Speaker 2: the revolutions slipped my mind, changing them to suit their needs,
Speaker 2: all with sort of a mathematical plan to engineer public sentiment.
Speaker 2: There's even this sort of kilroy esque character they create,
Speaker 2: you know, a little doodle that's put next to graffiti.
Speaker 2: The first of it theirs, and then later organic people
Speaker 2: adopt this symbol. And I think it's interesting that even
Speaker 2: the revolutionaries themselves are forced to engage in this sort
Speaker 2: of I guess you would say, like public relations or
Speaker 2: you know, sort of manufacturing of consent. Now, of course,
Speaker 2: right thear the loonies as they're called, right, the citizens
Speaker 2: of the Moon are being oppressed. You know, they're not
Speaker 2: given a fair shake at it. But what's interesting is
Speaker 2: that from the very beginning it's established that without that
Speaker 2: sort of top down revolutionary control, well, that sentiment will
Speaker 2: never go anywhere. The warden of the prison that they
Speaker 2: all hate, they admit to themselves, he's really not that
Speaker 2: bad of a guy. He's not such a horrible person
Speaker 2: per se, but he needs to be made into that
Speaker 2: kind of hate figure. And this is perhaps best exemplified
Speaker 2: by the inciting incident that kicks off this revolution where
Speaker 2: some of the you know, the the off Moon troops,
Speaker 2: you know, brought in from the Earth, from Earth, are
Speaker 2: sort of I won't say goaded into, but are put
Speaker 2: in a situation that results in a horrific murder and rape,
Speaker 2: and then that news is amplified to sort of kick
Speaker 2: off the revolution. So there's a lot there, James. This
Speaker 2: is supposed to be an interview, so I'll try and
Speaker 2: keep my contributions to a minimum. But what do you
Speaker 2: make of the I guess, the power structure of this book,
Speaker 2: the elitism, the understanding that public opinion must be managed
Speaker 2: in order to accomplish a goal. And then also the
Speaker 2: sort of fatalist note that, you know, the sort of
Speaker 2: I guess you could say the rhetoric of the revolution
Speaker 2: ultimately was it able to produce a radically different system.
Speaker 2: So a lot I've thrown at you there, James. I'm
Speaker 2: curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's all pretty fatalistic,
Speaker 1: and that is a source of the humor. The original
Speaker 1: title for this novel was The Brass Cannon, which is
Speaker 1: like a terrible a terrible title for you know, any
Speaker 1: novel that's not literally about a brass cannon. But why
Speaker 1: would that ever be anyway, The point is that it's
Speaker 1: like a small it's kind of like a signal gun
Speaker 1: that you use to like start a race or something.
Speaker 1: And the significance of this seemingly random object is that
Speaker 1: our heroic professor who's advising the revolutionaries and you know,
Speaker 1: really kind of the providing the animating spirit of the
Speaker 1: revolution as he suggested, he tells them a little story
Speaker 1: about a guy who had a you know, a patronage
Speaker 1: position in government and he was paid to polish a
Speaker 1: brass cannon at one of the local civic buildings. And
Speaker 1: obviously he enjoyed getting paid to basically do nothing, but
Speaker 1: it was not satisfying to his ambition. He wasn't getting ahead,
Speaker 1: he didn't have any kind of life prospects. You know,
Speaker 1: he's basically being bribed to surrender his agency, right, And
Speaker 1: so what the cannon polisher did is he finally quit
Speaker 1: his job and and as the professor says, he he
Speaker 1: tapped his savings, he bought his own brass cannon and
Speaker 1: went into business for himself. And so the sort of
Speaker 1: fatalistic joke here is, you know, self government is ultimately
Speaker 1: every bit at every every bit of farce, as much
Speaker 1: as as as government that is that is less participatory.
Speaker 1: And so you know, on the one hand, you can't
Speaker 1: beat city Hall, but on the other hand, you can
Speaker 1: overthrow city Hall, but then you immediately become city Hall.
Speaker 1: And it's in that sense that you kind of can't.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no ultimate wind condition. Politics is not
Speaker 1: a game that can be won. There's no sort of endpoint,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of stuck with it. It just seems
Speaker 1: to be one of those things where revolutions only only
Speaker 1: really happen when when people get pushed to this kind
Speaker 1: of point of absurdity where they feel like whatever the
Speaker 1: status quo is has just become kind of unbearably ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The ridiculousness of it becomes almost more important than the unbearableness.
Speaker 1: So uh so for the for the loonies, you know,
Speaker 1: the political problem is we're sending all this grain back
Speaker 1: to Earth and using this gravity well in a catapult
Speaker 1: to get all of this grain down there, because it's
Speaker 1: cheaper to make the grain up here on the Moon.
Speaker 1: But we don't have the water to keep doing this forever,
Speaker 1: and so it's unsustainable. And if we don't free ourselves
Speaker 1: from earth, then our home is going to wither up
Speaker 1: and die. We don't want that. That's like a you know,
Speaker 1: that's a sort of politically logical reason for for asserting
Speaker 1: self government, right, But really they just wanted to have
Speaker 1: something to do other than what they're already doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to die. But was that really what
Speaker 1: got them out of bed in the morning. Was that
Speaker 1: really what propelled the drama of the plot and the revolution.
Speaker 1: It was sort of, you know, it was more interesting.
Speaker 1: There was more agency there, and the pull of that,
Speaker 1: of that longing for agency to do something other than
Speaker 1: to just kind of, you know, polish the the silverware
Speaker 1: on the Titanic or whatever. It's strong. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot you can do about it. It seems to be
Speaker 1: just kind of a part of the human condition. And
Speaker 1: anyone who tries to spin that into something more glorious
Speaker 1: and noble than that Heinland seems to suggest, is ultimately
Speaker 1: kidding themselves in some way. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'd necessarily go that far. I do think that
Speaker 1: when you look at the Declaration of Independence, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously I'll be the attention tends to go to the
Speaker 1: to what's front loaded. You know, it's sort of you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the front office of the declaration, but
Speaker 1: at its most I think profound and even at its
Speaker 1: most Christian, is what you get in the back office,
Speaker 1: in the section that people don't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time with, which is the revolutionary saying, look, you know,
Speaker 1: like we've endured these abuses for a long time, and
Speaker 1: we've been very patient, and we consider you our brothers.
Speaker 1: We don't want to fight you, but you won't listen
Speaker 1: to us. And it's only after this sort of long
Speaker 1: train of abuses that they feel like they have no
Speaker 1: choice but to go ahead, and you know, not not
Speaker 1: send a wave of drones to kind of blow up
Speaker 1: all of the refineries in London, but to just declare independence.
Speaker 1: That seems to me to suggest that there's something a
Speaker 1: little more, you know, something with a little more of
Speaker 1: a spiritual earnestness to it than what Heimland is willing
Speaker 1: to allow. But there's no question that he, you know,
Speaker 1: he makes some good points, as they say, and to me,
Speaker 1: kind of what where the ultimate tension is around around
Speaker 1: those points that he does make, is there's a pattern
Speaker 1: throughout society of successful empires, successful regimes, sending people off
Speaker 1: to a frontier or to the margins of empire and
Speaker 1: feeling like very expansive, very successful, very masterful, but then
Speaker 1: just discovering, not that much later, to their sometimes their
Speaker 1: shock and horror, that those colonists are, those explorers that
Speaker 1: they sent off to the frontier, well they've changed, and
Speaker 1: now they're coming back, and they're coming back to fundamentally
Speaker 1: change the regime, to change their homeland. That kind of
Speaker 1: blowback is something that I think is a very rich area,
Speaker 1: especially as we're starting to think about, you know, what
Speaker 1: kind of change human beings experience when they're sent off
Speaker 1: into a technological environment that's much different from what it
Speaker 1: is that they grew up with or what they left
Speaker 1: behind at the imperial core.
Speaker 2: And this reminds me of a remark from Professor day
Speaker 2: La Pauz where he's talking about the social arrangements on Luna,
Speaker 2: something that we'll get into in more detail, but he
Speaker 2: says explicitly, you know, human organization conforms to hard realities.
Speaker 2: The idea is that, you know, humanity is malleable to
Speaker 2: a certain degree, and if conditions change, they will form
Speaker 2: the appropriate institutions. So I will say, James, I try
Speaker 2: to be relatively polite to the libertarians, but I will
Speaker 2: say it is kind of funny given the stereotypes that
Speaker 2: the you know, the book, you know, the anarcho capitalist
Speaker 2: sci fi Future does feature roughly unbroken fifteen minute intermission
Speaker 2: about the age of consent. I will leave that there.
Speaker 2: That is kind of funny, But right, Luna has this
Speaker 2: very non traditional social arrangement, originally brought about by the
Speaker 2: fact that when it was exclusively a prison colony and
Speaker 2: then kind of early in its construction it was like Alaska,
Speaker 2: you know, Manitoba, any of these sort of resource extraction
Speaker 2: areas where the ratio of men to women is ten
Speaker 2: to one. You know, we're close to that. And so
Speaker 2: this has produced a sort of weird social arrangement where
Speaker 2: they have polygamy, they have these sort of line marriages
Speaker 2: which are sort of like a I guess you would
Speaker 2: call it sort of like a almost like a family
Speaker 2: business more so than a traditional marriage. There's this sort
Speaker 2: of I guess you could say, sort of proto feminism
Speaker 2: to the book, where women in lunar society are given
Speaker 2: you know, complete and total free reign, where the men
Speaker 2: sort of tightly police themselves, you know, in sexual matters.
Speaker 2: And that's interesting, right as in aside, you know, we
Speaker 2: could look at highlines later work and deduce some of
Speaker 2: his hobbies or proclivities from that. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: worth our time. But that idea that the most basic
Speaker 2: sort of unit of you know, human organization is incredibly
Speaker 2: malleable and absent the situations of Earth could be found
Speaker 2: in another form is a really interesting idea. Is there
Speaker 2: something there that you've you've sort of recognized, James.
Speaker 1: Well, it's very interesting because you can look at just
Speaker 1: the way that fundamental human relationships have changed and been
Speaker 1: transformed in areas where people spend more time around technology
Speaker 1: than around their fellow human beings. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, polygamy, and we're talking about you know, people
Speaker 1: who have other priorities than than having children and you know,
Speaker 1: raising them according to the sort of modern tradition or
Speaker 1: the nuclear family. I mean I always think of, you know,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who came to the US, uh
Speaker 1: to get a tech job and and uh and and
Speaker 1: went to work at Google, excited to see the the
Speaker 1: Americans and to be around the kind of the most
Speaker 1: important Americans, and he quickly discovered working at Google that
Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be any real Americans there. They
Speaker 1: all seem to be like some kind of alien who
Speaker 1: had not a whole lot in common with with Americans
Speaker 1: and seemed to be functioning in a way that didn't
Speaker 1: bear any clear connection to the tradition and the culture
Speaker 1: of their country, not because they were all Ashwan B's,
Speaker 1: but because they were citizens of Google, and and so
Speaker 1: as we're thinking about, you know, what lessons we can
Speaker 1: learn from this story of kind of colonial blowback on
Speaker 1: the imperial core and that you know, this is something
Speaker 1: that that you can find in in uh In Edmund Burg.
Speaker 1: Edmund Burke too when he's famously warning that the East
Speaker 1: India Company is bad because all of these you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the best of of young Britain is going
Speaker 1: to go off to India and they're going to learn
Speaker 1: all of these mores around kind of living that that
Speaker 1: that despotic lifestyle of of having lots of wealth and
Speaker 1: having this sort of caste of underlings and uh sort
Speaker 1: of debauched and decadent living. And then they're going to
Speaker 1: come back to England and ruin England too, you know,
Speaker 1: so that this is a theme that we can see
Speaker 1: sort of weaving through a lot of Western history, maybe
Speaker 1: even as far back as you know, the Romans and
Speaker 1: the German tribes. Anyway, when when we're when we're looking
Speaker 1: at this and thinking about you know, maybe tech world, cyberspace, uh,
Speaker 1: the the realm of the cyborg is kind of one
Speaker 1: of these, uh, frontier areas where we send people in
Speaker 1: there thinking that they're going to extend America into this
Speaker 1: frontier world, but in fact, the frontier world is going
Speaker 1: to change them in ways that we don't anticipate, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to come back to us and try
Speaker 1: to remake us in their image.
Speaker 2: There's a lot there. I was thinking of conversations I've
Speaker 2: had with my wife, I mentioned before on the show.
Speaker 2: I won't go into it, that she's worked as a teacher,
Speaker 2: you know a number of different schools, and First School
Speaker 2: is a very very impoverished area, you know, highly black,
Speaker 2: sort of ghetto of Richmond, and the school system had
Speaker 2: decided to issue all of the students chromebooks. Right to
Speaker 2: these kids from kindergarten up had effectively quasi unrestricted access
Speaker 2: to the Internet. I mean sure, you know, there were
Speaker 2: blockers in place, but obviously those didn't act, those didn't
Speaker 2: last long, and it was interesting to see how that
Speaker 2: changed learning and also social dynamics. Right, there were children
Speaker 2: admitted it's a poor school. So who's to say how
Speaker 2: much of this is involves the tech? How much of
Speaker 2: this is just school dysfunction. But we're sort of not
Speaker 2: quite nonverbal, but at least close to it. Right, They
Speaker 2: had sort of pushed all of that energy into digital interaction.
Speaker 2: You know, they text one another, they'd message one another,
Speaker 2: but there wasn't a lot of talking or interaction going on. Also,
Speaker 2: obviously there are you know, there are negative side effects
Speaker 2: to exposing you know, young children to the unrestricted internet. Okay,
Speaker 2: fair enough, but it is interesting to see in which
Speaker 2: that many of these circuits which evolved in our brains
Speaker 2: over thousands of years are sort of breaking in you know,
Speaker 2: novel circumstances.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: A great example, you know is diet. Right, the the
Speaker 2: things that your brain wants you to eat a lot of,
Speaker 2: you know, because they will they will make you more
Speaker 2: likely to pass on your genes. Well, in a time
Speaker 2: of abundance, that's a maladaptive tendency that makes you much
Speaker 2: less likely to pass on your genes. It makes you fatter,
Speaker 2: it makes you more unhealthy, it makes you much less
Speaker 2: likely to find a mate. It's an interesting thing then, right.
Speaker 2: I will admit you know, I'm a firm believer in
Speaker 2: human nature. I think there are things about ourselves that
Speaker 2: are unchangeable. But we can also admit that there is
Speaker 2: a big part of our learned behaviors that is built
Speaker 2: for a radically different set of circumstances, which is generally speaking,
Speaker 2: what makes science fiction interesting. You can take a trend
Speaker 2: we observe and amplify it ten twenty times to see
Speaker 2: a more extreme version, and poke around that central question
Speaker 2: of well how does the human organism react to extremely
Speaker 2: novel circumstances? Right? Well, and beyond what we've already seen.
Speaker 2: I think it's what makes it so interesting. So one
Speaker 2: more thing I want to bring up, James, when we
Speaker 2: look at this book is the sort of synthetic hero, right,
Speaker 2: the ring leader of at least on paper, ring leader
Speaker 2: of this revolution. Because I think it's very interesting, right.
Speaker 2: The classic line from the Matrix that the desert of
Speaker 2: the real that we live in an era of I mean,
Speaker 2: there just is no social cohesion. Right, there are tens
Speaker 2: and thousands of different narratives, each fighting for central control.
Speaker 2: And so to see a book written in the sixties
Speaker 2: where you have this sort of focal figure, right, the
Speaker 2: man to lead a revolution, who is completely and totally fake.
Speaker 2: He doesn't exist, he's not real. He is sort of
Speaker 2: an agglomeration of both our three revolutionaries and also the
Speaker 2: computer animating. So I'm curious, what do you make of
Speaker 2: that in this book?
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, you know, look, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite sci fi films is The Edge of Tomorrow, which again,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not the best title, but a great film.
Speaker 1: And in that film, Emily Blunt, I believe, plays a
Speaker 1: similar sort of figure who is mythologized into this you know,
Speaker 1: incredibly brave human who has this incredible kill count sort
Speaker 1: of fighting these aliens who are invading. Curiously enough, you
Speaker 1: know that that film is set on the anniversary of
Speaker 1: D Day. Moon is a harsh mistress, is you know,
Speaker 1: the the independence movement is is time to July fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty seventy six, which is now a scant fifty years away.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, there's a trope of of the
Speaker 1: the the the ultimate or the ideal leader of a
Speaker 1: revolution being someone who in fact does not actually exist,
Speaker 1: who is a fantasy you can think of. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we've seen this with the war in Ukraine, where
Speaker 1: they just invent this fighter Ace who who never existed.
Speaker 1: There's there's a tradition here, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Heinland is suggesting pretty persuisively that this is a tradition
Speaker 1: which we should expect to continue and and perhaps even
Speaker 1: to become perfected or elevated to a point where, you know,
Speaker 1: even very discerning people are simply not going to be
Speaker 1: able to tell whether or not a public figure actually exists.
Speaker 1: You know. To me, the the real risk here is
Speaker 1: that the the the human society verse versus the the
Speaker 1: cyborg society, in the same way that it's the Earthlings
Speaker 1: and the loonies in UH in Himland become so uh
Speaker 1: distinct and oppositional in their identities that America is really
Speaker 1: not able to to continue it's its political existence, and
Speaker 1: that were driven to a point of civil war that's
Speaker 1: far messier and far more comprehensive than uh than the
Speaker 1: First Civil War. You know, we've got uh these these
Speaker 1: kind of tropes in in the UH, in the discourse
Speaker 1: of of of the left sort of turning into gay
Speaker 1: race communism and then the right turning into gay space fascism.
Speaker 1: And it does seem, you know, reading reading this book,
Speaker 1: that it wouldn't be that surprise you. We can kind
Speaker 1: of see the path of how the human society would
Speaker 1: resort to, you know, gay race communism and the cyborg
Speaker 1: society would resort to gay space fascism. And if those
Speaker 1: two forces collide, it's just going to be a very
Speaker 1: difficult experience for so many Americans. It's going to seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, two alien races just kind of trying to
Speaker 1: blow each other away and suck every American into that
Speaker 1: kind of conflict. And you know, what better way to
Speaker 1: make ordinary people feel like they don't have a choice
Speaker 1: or that there's something wrong with them unless they make
Speaker 1: the right choice, other than to manufacture these kinds of
Speaker 1: heroic figures. So much of what is drive having political
Speaker 1: discourse today is is basically the hero's journey, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, you get it out of Carl Jung or
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell, and you know, you really are going to
Speaker 1: piss some people off if you log on and start
Speaker 1: deconstructing the hero's journey. You know, you're that's that's seen
Speaker 1: as being very black pilled and very poor form. Whose
Speaker 1: side are you on? Uh? But the basic sales pitch
Speaker 1: of the hero's journey that the instrumental political value of
Speaker 1: the hero's journey is for the very ambitious person to say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to have more power than you,
Speaker 1: I want to have more money than you. I want
Speaker 1: to be maybe in charge of you. And so I'm
Speaker 1: going to offer you a trade. You're going to let
Speaker 1: me fully live into my ambitions, and in exchange for that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do something amazing that you're you
Speaker 1: the ordinary people are going to benefit from. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go, you know, I'm going to kill a monster,
Speaker 1: I'm going to beat up a bad guy, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find the treasure. I'm going to save the world. And
Speaker 1: in virtue of the fact that I'm going on this
Speaker 1: good quest and I'm this ambitious hero, you're going to
Speaker 1: allow me to enjoy the benefits of, you know, my
Speaker 1: personal supremacy. That's one kind of social compact, right, and
Speaker 1: and it can certainly work, and it worked pretty reliably
Speaker 1: for for quite some time in Pagan societies, and for
Speaker 1: you know, people who are looking around at the kind
Speaker 1: of gay race communism side of the ledger and saying
Speaker 1: like this is terrible. You know, their alternative that they
Speaker 1: oftentimes reach for is basically that politically instrumentalized hero's journey,
Speaker 1: you know, best people going on good quests, that that's
Speaker 1: who should rule, and ordinary people should really want them
Speaker 1: to rule and really trust them. But that schema is
Speaker 1: in danger of breaking down itself. I think people are
Speaker 1: experiencing so much spiritual dislocation, spiritual emptiness, spiritual sickness, and
Speaker 1: the hero's journey bargain doesn't seem to be super good
Speaker 1: at addressing those things. And so when we're wrestling anew
Speaker 1: with these questions of you know, how do you manage
Speaker 1: ambition and is it possible to maintain self governance in
Speaker 1: an era like this, and how do you ensure that
Speaker 1: the spillover of skills and talent and people in your
Speaker 1: society doesn't end up coming back to change you in
Speaker 1: ways you don't want to be changed. I think we're
Speaker 1: just going to continue to be kind of forced into
Speaker 1: a new sort of reckoning with all of these historical
Speaker 1: attempts to resolve it. You know, Tokeville talks a lot
Speaker 1: about the problem of ambition, Machiavelli talks a lot about
Speaker 1: the problem of ambition, and all of these guys have
Speaker 1: an understanding of these kind of imperial core, colonial, frontier,
Speaker 1: center margin kinds of of challenges. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: going away. And I think that, you know, if the
Speaker 1: if the spiritual or religious component of human experience is
Speaker 1: kind of pushed out of the equation, and you know,
Speaker 1: Heinland doesn't give it very much time. He he doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a super well developed sort of theology or
Speaker 1: or or spiritual anthropology, at least in this book. If
Speaker 1: that stuff is moved off to the side, then I
Speaker 1: think people are going to start reaching for, you know,
Speaker 1: purely political or purely technological solutions that might end up
Speaker 1: getting us into more trouble than than getting us out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, several things. I think it's your wise to bring
Speaker 2: up the sort of significance of comparing this revolution right
Speaker 2: to the American Revolution, because clearly, obviously there's a date significance.
Speaker 2: It's interesting they're kind of multiple cynical asides. When our
Speaker 2: revolutionaries are on their tour back down to Earth, you know,
Speaker 2: meeting with foreign dignitaries where they talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: wherever they go, they compare their revolution to you know,
Speaker 2: whatever relevant historical event. So you know, in Mexico they
Speaker 2: focus on the fact that their constitution was signed on
Speaker 2: May fifth, you know, kind of going around shopping, you know,
Speaker 2: this idea to tie their concept of revolution to ours.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, that core versus outer distinction,
Speaker 2: you know, the colonies versus the empire is this sort
Speaker 2: of classic divide we've seen over and over again. And
Speaker 2: when the book ends, you know, our main character, you know, Manny,
Speaker 2: is sort of pondering what has become of Luna. You know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of lost a little bit of that, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of that kind of wild West, you know, atmosphere
Speaker 2: to it. It's getting more built up. There are moral
Speaker 2: laws that forbid, you know, what you can and can't do.
Speaker 2: And he talks about the fact that, well, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the guys are already moving out to asteroids.
Speaker 2: I think I may follow them, And especially because it's
Speaker 2: sort of a minor point in this book that in
Speaker 2: space humans do not age at least nearly as much
Speaker 2: as they do under full gravity, and so the idea
Speaker 2: is that you know, sort of like roll into the
Speaker 2: headless Gunner or whatever, like Manny will be able to
Speaker 2: live on, you know, live out this kind of wild
Speaker 2: you know, sort of frontier life into the future. It's
Speaker 2: sort of the hopeful note at the end of it.
Speaker 2: But sure the empire is expanding more of it is
Speaker 2: being pulled into civilization, pulled into the core. But nonetheless
Speaker 2: there is a place for freedom on sort of the
Speaker 2: outer edges, right, that's where that sort of freedom can
Speaker 2: be found. And I think that that is a it's
Speaker 2: an interesting message you see kind of at the end there.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting, especially you know, you can go back
Speaker 1: to Peter Thiel was making the rounds on on social
Speaker 1: media or in the sort of podcast world as he
Speaker 1: sometimes does, and he was recounting the story of Elon
Speaker 1: Musk realizing that maybe going to Mars was not enough.
Speaker 1: So I think he was sitting there with with with
Speaker 1: Peter and and Demis Hasabis, and you know, they're kind
Speaker 1: of doing the super ambitious guy thing where where or
Speaker 1: Demis said, you know, I am building the most powerful
Speaker 1: AI in the universe, and so I'm doing the most
Speaker 1: important thing. And then Elan said well, no, I you know,
Speaker 1: I am making the human race, that interplanetary civilization. So
Speaker 1: and I'll extend the light of consciousness throughout the universe.
Speaker 1: I'm doing the most important thing. And uh and Demis
Speaker 1: basically said, well, you know, the the woke mind virus
Speaker 1: is going to beat you tomorrows. You're going to get there,
Speaker 1: and it's in some paradoxical way going to already be there.
Speaker 1: And you're you know, you you can run, but you
Speaker 1: can't hide. And so the the extension of that idea
Speaker 1: to to Heinlein would be like, well, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna leave. You're going to leave the moon
Speaker 1: for an asteroid and how long is that going to last?
Speaker 1: And the more that technology develops and expands, and frankly,
Speaker 1: the more that people turn to technology as a way
Speaker 1: of forcing an end of history of humanity by speeding
Speaker 1: up time to sort of speed run through and and
Speaker 1: bring an end to all of these problems of the
Speaker 1: human condition, solve them all. We're just going to race
Speaker 1: ahead until we just sort of burst through into this
Speaker 1: post human, post historical paradise. There's not going to be
Speaker 1: a prospect for exit, which is so beloved of libertarians.
Speaker 1: If we're staring down that kind of future, then you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to sort of think about the
Speaker 1: problems that Highland presents in something of a different way,
Speaker 1: because because he does seem to assume that in this
Speaker 1: much more technological future, there are still going to be
Speaker 1: real options for someone who says, well, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna walk away. I don't know what's out there,
Speaker 1: but it's got to be better than this. If that
Speaker 1: possibility starts to disappear, even if you know, just in
Speaker 1: in the in the human imagination, then there are going
Speaker 1: to be more confrontations. And if we don't want those
Speaker 1: confrontations to lead to conflicts that you know, cause perhaps
Speaker 1: millions and millions of innocent civilians to suffer and die unduly,
Speaker 1: then we're going to need to look more to spiritual
Speaker 1: resources than to technological or military ones.
Speaker 2: It's it's really a unique book. It's one I recommend
Speaker 2: that everyone read. It has this reputation of being sort
Speaker 2: of like a didactic, a narco capitalist screed, sort of
Speaker 2: another take on Iron Rand, and there's really a lot
Speaker 2: more to it than that. Obviously, that is the perspective
Speaker 2: of the book. If you can even say that, right.
Speaker 2: It's one of you know, Hindhlight's multiple kind of political
Speaker 2: system books. I will be doing episodes on the other two,
Speaker 2: you know, soon. But it's a very interesting intellectual exercise.
Speaker 2: You're sort of poking around, well, how would one accomplish
Speaker 2: this goal? Right, how would one secede? What would you need?
Speaker 2: And the sort of paradox of it is that seemingly
Speaker 2: to have a free society you need a sort of
Speaker 2: omnipotent god king. And like I said, it's been a
Speaker 2: decade since I read this book, and I'd forgotten, and
Speaker 2: I admit was kind of disappointed that Mike dies in
Speaker 2: the end, right, He's either killed or sort of scattered
Speaker 2: to the wind. His consciousness is you know, dissolved due
Speaker 2: to the kind of climactic I guess bombardon it at
Speaker 2: the end of the the sort of war between Earth
Speaker 2: and the Moon, because that's its own interesting question, you know,
Speaker 2: what becomes of your AI philosopher god king when the
Speaker 2: war is done? We see little hints, you know. Mike
Speaker 2: says that, you know, watching these sort of kinetic bombs
Speaker 2: drop onto Earth is orgasmic, right, the term he uses,
Speaker 2: and it's not played to be overly sinister. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not a sort of you know, over the top
Speaker 2: signal that something bad is going to happen. But that
Speaker 2: is an interesting speculative question, one that is not answered, right,
Speaker 2: what becomes of this sort of ultimately powerful AI in
Speaker 2: peace time? And at least in the book, it's not answered.
Speaker 2: Did you notice that as well, James?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, what becomes of the AI
Speaker 1: in peacetime if Tokvill is our guide, is that it
Speaker 1: becomes just a very boring instrument of taking care of
Speaker 1: people's boring, quotidian needs and petty desires, soft despotism. That's
Speaker 1: not very inspiring, that doesn't serve the ambitious, That doesn't
Speaker 1: feel very political in the agonistic sense. It feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, it feels like kind of the Europe of
Speaker 1: the pejorative description, where where it's the end of history
Speaker 1: and your kojev and you say like, yes, I'm a bureaucrat.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing? You know, we did it. We're kind
Speaker 1: of just going to keep this thing rolling along indefinitely.
Speaker 1: That's not very satisfying to the super ambitious. But you
Speaker 1: know what is interesting if Tokville is right about the
Speaker 1: sociological structure of society in democratic ages, as the equality
Speaker 1: of conditions tends to spread over humanity, really ambitious people
Speaker 1: under those circumstances are going to be led toward the
Speaker 1: military rather than to commercial life, or they're going to
Speaker 1: use commercial life as a way of leveraging themselves into
Speaker 1: military power, which seems to make them very distinct from
Speaker 1: the common democratic man who just kind of wants petty
Speaker 1: cares taken care of and physical comfort and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a feeling of being cosmically connected. Right, But it
Speaker 1: does seem that Tokyo's warning about pantheism having secret charms
Speaker 1: in democratic ages because of how it promises to dissolve
Speaker 1: the individual and all of the anxieties of being an
Speaker 1: individual into the cosmic whole or this grand unity, that
Speaker 1: does seem to be a religion that serves the ambitious
Speaker 1: elite just as well, if for different reasons, as the
Speaker 1: as the unambitious commoners. And so, you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: looking at someone like you know, Elon Musk, or you
Speaker 1: look across the pond and you've got like David Deutsch
Speaker 1: and all these kinds of continental scientist types, you know,
Speaker 1: they really think that it's all about consciousness, and it's
Speaker 1: better to discard our humanity if it means advancing consciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's pantheism. And then you look down at kind
Speaker 1: of the lowly American, permanent underclass person who's got their
Speaker 1: their crystals, and you know, is is maybe starting to
Speaker 1: get into psychedelics or whatever, or or likes to meditate
Speaker 1: and is just kind of passing the time trying to
Speaker 1: achieve that experience of oceanic consciousness. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: religious schema that seems to reinforce kind of the the
Speaker 1: the worst tendencies of the person who is who is
Speaker 1: not ambitious enough, and then also of the person who
Speaker 1: is too ambitious. And I do think that you know,
Speaker 1: if if if Tokeville is right about these things, then
Speaker 1: what you can expect from from an AI, a sort
Speaker 1: of national AI in peacetime is soft despotism. But that
Speaker 1: same AI in in wartime is uh is going to
Speaker 1: be a much harsher.
Speaker 3: Entity.
Speaker 1: And that does seem to reflect pretty well what the
Speaker 1: character of Mike goes through over the course of this book,
Speaker 1: which is something that doesn't have to change that much
Speaker 1: or really at all, in order to move from being
Speaker 1: kind of your friendly jokester who's handing out you know,
Speaker 1: universal high income checks uh and and can then transform
Speaker 1: into you know, someone who's potentially capable of destroying the
Speaker 1: life on Earth.
Speaker 2: So, James, this has been a fascinating discussion. Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for really making me read this
Speaker 2: book again. It was on my shelf. I'd had it
Speaker 2: but just never been motivated to go back through it
Speaker 2: and got a lot out of it. But if people
Speaker 2: are interested in you, interested in your work, what's a
Speaker 2: good way for them to find more?
Speaker 1: Sure, I've got a weekly column over at Blaze Media.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm writing you know, about once a month for
Speaker 1: for FAI Foundation for American Innovation. Always lurking in some
Speaker 1: capacity on x dot com the everything app at James Pulis.
Speaker 1: Dms are open, so you know, hit me up if
Speaker 1: you've got something worthwhile. Don't don't abuse me, please, I
Speaker 1: would hate to have to lock my dms. And gosh,
Speaker 1: what else you know?
Speaker 3: Books?
Speaker 1: Human Forever is the tech book I do say? Do
Speaker 1: you dare say that it's it's ahead of its time?
Speaker 1: That's on canonic dot x y z available only for bitcoin.
Speaker 1: It's it's important. You know, people need to be using
Speaker 1: this stuff if they want to not be trapped in
Speaker 1: the world of fed bucks and the world of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to talk to the bot instead of talked
Speaker 1: to the hand. I think that's probably enough. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: floating around UH and UH and I like to talk.
Speaker 1: So there's lots to do and loss to think through.
Speaker 1: And we we do still have a window. We still
Speaker 1: have some time to to get it together before it's
Speaker 1: too late.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, man, I'm really interested to see your book
Speaker 2: when it comes out. I'll be sure to grab a
Speaker 2: copy of it. Thanks again for making time. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Everyone at home, keep your height up. Well, I can't
Speaker 2: last forever.
Speaker 3: Good night. That's that's.
Speaker 1: That's the
Speaker 2: Bagariagary Program.