Speaker 1: That that is futile. Soon the machines will do it
for you. And so you've demoralized an entire generation and
told them that they can look forward to basically being
pets to the machines or to billionaires with machines. Okay,
if that actually comes true, nightmare. But if it doesn't
come true, then you've enfeebled this generation. They did not
hit the ground running, and so that is even worse
to me. Right, Like you never get the god like Ai,
you never get the superpower brainship. All you get is,
you know, a fluffy dream and a whole lot of
atrophied human beings. That's the real nightmare. And that's what
I hope can be countered, and it can be. I
really do believe that. This is Jonathan Peshel.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone.
Speaker 3: I am excited to be here with Joe Allen. Joe
Allen is the author of the book Dark Eon. He's
also a tech editor on Steve Bannon's War Room, and
he's going to help us think through all the things
tech and all the things transhuman that are transpiring around
us today.
Speaker 2: So Joe, thanks for talking to me.
Speaker 1: Very good to be here, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, my first question is going to be
a very broad one. There are so many things happening
simultaneously right now, you know, with the kind of explosion
of AI in the actual models, to the you know,
to Trump saying he's going to deregulate AI as much
as possible, investing in the Stargate project, with Musk being
in the White House.
Speaker 2: There's just crazy. It is this crazy.
Speaker 3: What is the thing that is grabbing your attention the most,
that you think is what we need to be paying
attention to the most?
Speaker 1: You know, the duality of this administration is really striking
from my perspective. Many of the issues that I was
that I voted for Trump on the basis of, you know,
he's seems to be coming through for us on the border,
slashing a lot of the wasteful government spending a fraction
of it anyway, and you know, of course doing away
with DEI affirmative action, these sorts of things. To me,
these are all positives. But you know, I covered this
for the majority of twenty twenty four, This influence by
tech accelerationists. You know, Peter Thiel's been with him from
the beginning. Since back in twenty fifteen sixteen. But then
you have Musk coming on board, you have Mark Andrees
coming on board. There's always been that element, and I've
always tried to beat it into the heads of my
listeners and readers, is that transhumanism isn't some globalist thing,
it's not some left wing thing. It's always had a
kind of right wing flavor from even the Nietzschean origins.
But also you've got nick Land people like this that
are not liberal. So it's not like this comes as
a surprise. You know, to the chagrin of the war
room audience, I was banging on this drum that Trump
is going to be a mixed bag, and you know,
on one half of that bag is all the things
that we want to see happen in America, the possibility
of preserving the Republic. And on the other hand, you
have red, white, and Blue demons clawing their way into
the earth to get rare earth minerals, and you know,
develop massive artificial intelligence infrastructure that will watch your every
move and become a godlike entity for machine worshippers. So
you know, it's a little half and half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that we can
and dive into.
Speaker 3: And it would be interesting to think about it because
you know, there is of course the left wing aspect
of transhumanism which has to do with this vision of progress,
this vision that there's a relationship between scientific and science
and technical progress and moral progress, and the idea of
making it possible to be more and more idiosyncratic and
less and less you know, that's a less and less
connected to the traditional hierarchies and be able to do
whatever you want. And so you can see these aspects
of transhumanism in kind of the biological modifications of the
bodies with obviously transgender stuff, but then also body modification
in terms of the more aesthetic aspect. All of these
things definitely do connect with AI and also the idea
of kind of being whatever you want online in the metaverse.
Speaker 2: You know, of the avatar.
Speaker 3: But what would you see what is the connection to
the more kind of right wing and more conservative aspect
that that leads into transhumanism.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, just to address that really quickly, the
notion of pro both technical and moral progress moving forward,
so to speak, in tandem. It's more capitalist progress than
Marxist or communist progress. Not to say that there aren't
communists who I would classify as transhumanist, but it is
definitely techno capital driving it, so that even someone that
like Martin Rothblat is probably the most outspoken on the
connection between transgenderism and transhumanism. But Rothblatt is close to
a billionaire, if not a billionaire, you know, roth Black
came from the tech world, developed serious XM, all these
sorts of things. So, you know, I think that it
is progressive, right. It sees history, especially the singularitarians, see
history as this exponential increase in sophisticated technology, so on
and so forth. But it is by and large capitalist
vision of that. So that is to the extent you know,
left and right, You've talked about this at length. Left
and right are very slippery terms and very fuzzy conceptually.
They don't make sense in the same ways that they did,
you know, during the French Revolution. Right. So, but to
the extent that you would say that right wing is
more free market, that right wing is more nationalist, or
that right wing is in some sense traditionalists in regard
to say gender, a good example of the latter of
gender norms, gender normativity and transhumanism would be the Enhanced
Olympics that Peter Teel is funding. In many others, this
is especially from a masculine point of view, very gender normative,
in which, you know, the traits, the masculine traits are
being emphasized by way of technology, whether it's you know,
you're you're juice and steroids or any other sort of
like body modification augmentation. Another example would be the sort
of quasi porn starlet of Fox News, right like the
you know that these these women, you know, some of
them are naturally beautiful, but you know, by and large
the culture coming out of Hollywood of augmentation creating an
esthetic of a feminine aesthetic in and of itself. You
might not call that transhuman, I would, but it is
on that spectrum of like normativity. Now real quick, you know,
with nationalism, Peter Teel very much an American nationalist, Mark
and Dreesen I think, at least, you know, more recently
an American nationalists, and certainly anti communists, certainly anti China
and Elon Musk as much of he is really a
trickster figure, a kind of a Luciferian you know, tongue
in cheek Luciferian sort of figure. But I don't think
that he is one disingenuous when he says that he
wants to see America become great, right, I don't know
about a great again. He seems to be much more
forward thinking. But I do think that by throwing in
his chips a quarter billion of them with Trump, that
it does signal a legitimate dedication to America. So this
sort of nationalism, So yeah, I mean I transhumanism, you know,
this desire to use science and technology to go beyond
the human is transpolitical. It's transnational. There. You know, people
like to wag a an accusing finger at the World
Economic Forum and clash Schwab and uvall Harari. But these
are mouthpieces. These are people doing pr You know. The
real transhumanists are something else. You know, both the philosophical
transhumanists and the ones in Silicon Valley at Google, at Meta,
you know, in these massive companies that are making it
possible to, if not go beyond the human, at least
hold that myth out that we can go beyond the
human and you know, give us some reasonable facsimile of
the cyborg.
Speaker 3: So what let's let's let me play Devil's advocate for
a little while.
Speaker 2: People who watch me.
Speaker 3: Know what I probably think. But you know, why is
that a problem? Let's let's play it out, like why
is it a problem? Why is transhumanism a threat to us?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't we want to be more than human?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Why, you know? What is it about us?
Speaker 3: The more the more kind of traditional thinkers who who
see that as a as an issue and related to
a kind of idolatry, But like, what would be the
argument for it?
Speaker 2: Like why, you know, why is it? Why is it bad?
I'm not sure, Like I'm trying to. I'd like to
hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, if you're making billions of dollars or
if you want to become a slave to the machine,
it's a great thing. But I think the number.
Speaker 3: One work that out, Like what you would just say
is that it's what transhumanism will do, will be create
a more an elite that will be more than any
of many, more of an elite than anything we've seen
until now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they say rising tides lift all boats, but something
tells me that we're going to be in the little
puttering motor boats while they're in the yachts. Yeah, I
excuse me. I think that the number one issue I
have with the concept of transhumanism isn't that it's not
that people want to do this. People have all sorts
of desires. I'm not trying to stand in the way
of them. To the extent they affect me or my family,
or my community or my country, then it becomes my
problem too, right, And so one of the central features
of the kind of current wave of AI hype is
the concept of human replacement, the greater replacement. It's very similar,
I think to the issue of mass immigration. You have
this alien swarm coming in to both displace the workers
of a nation, to subvert their political power by watering
it down, diluting it by a group that is easily manipulated.
And in the case of the public discourse, the same
artificial intelligence fits and the aversion to artificial intelligence, these
these alien minds, and the aversion to especially humanoid robots
that weird, creepy feeling you get is very similar to racism.
And you hear these arguments from pro transhumanists. They say
speciesism is racism towards technology, and in a way they're correct.
But I am an unapologetic human racist or speciesist, and
even if I don't want to see all the robots
rounded up and sent away to you know, space, Not
that I would argue with it, but I think that
there needs to be that suspicion because the people pushing
this is the most bizarre sales pitch one could imagine.
We are going to solve physics, the theory of everything,
We are going to advance human technology, we are going
to become godlike, going to cure cancer, become quasi immortals,
and also we're going to replace every human role in
society and possibly kill everyone. It's a very strange sales pitch,
but that's what they're going with, from Elon Musk to
Google to Anthropic even like more conservative people like Young Lacun,
the chief AI scientists at Meta, they all talk in
terms of creating this artificial general intelligence that will be
smarter than any human being on Earth, may be smarter
than the collective of all human beings on Earth, and
that the creation of this will not only demote humans
on the great chain of being to being either pets
or biofuel or whatever we end up being, to this
being and that you know, descending from the creation of
this technology then you already see indications of it with
just the regular old artificial narrow intelligence we have now.
Descending from that, you get the capacity to read the
human brain, to manipulate the human brain, to create sophisticated
brain implants that would or even non invasive brain interfaces
that would allow us to communicate directly with these alien
minds and fuse with them like symbiotes. You have the
capacity like all these humanoid robots you're seeing everywhere. The
reason that speed is so fierce is because artificial intelligence
allows for a kind of flow, flexible computing that accelerates
the development of it. And so the assumption is that
post agi, the world is flooded with these robots, whether
they're humanoid or any other shape. And then of course
the physical manipulation of the body is also accelerated. You
see that with alpha fold and other kind of similar
ais that accelerate the process of sequencing the genome, predicting
what any kind of mutation in that genome will do
to the proteins downstream, and then the body downstream. So
all of it comes down right like massive transformation number
one problem. The greater replacement to me number two is
this you know, just coming from the background I do.
You can't escape the sense that, as many of them say,
they are bringing to life the myths of the ancients.
You think Icarus or Tallos, you think the golemn and
you think of any of the science fiction that emerged
from you know, a century plus ago, especially Saint Rossam's
Universal Robots, where the word even comes from. In all
of those that, you know some instinct in the human mind,
or you know, some direct insight into the nature of
humanity in the future, whatever the cause, there is this
darkness embedded in those myths, in anti human darkness, and
I think that to deny that and accept any kind
of utopian point of view would be beyond naive. I
don't think these people who are creating these systems have
our best interests in mind ultimately, And so whenever they
start talking about we, as in we humanity are creating
this and this is what it's going to do for
us humanity, I don't hear that. I hear us as
in this small group of people who are either ideologically
invested or financially invested, or both in creating artificial intelligence
and transforming the civilization civilizations of the world. There may
not be any stopping that. But the more we can
carve out space to preserve what we do hold sacred,
the better off we are.
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one and so I will see all of you in class,
Tell me what you think about this?
Speaker 2: Is that what I see?
Speaker 3: Because it is in some way it's such a weird
contradiction to realize that the AI is promised to us
as being the thing that will solve all our problems,
you know, while simultaneously being the thing that will overrun us,
you know. And it's interesting because it is in some
ways it's like an image of sin, or like an
image of the passions themselves, because we deal with that
little on a smaller level all the time. Right, It's
like the person that reach out reaches out for the bottle,
or every time you lie, you have that that double
thing playing in your mind, which is, I'm going to
engage in this behavior because it's going to give me
more power in the moment. It's going to give me
something that will.
Speaker 2: Increase my reach. But I also secretly know.
Speaker 3: That that thing that I'm putting out in the world
always has the danger of then overwhelming me, like coming
back and eating me. Especially a lie is a good example, right,
It's like when you lie, you kind of secretly know that, Okay,
I'm putting that out there, but I've just put out
something that will maybe devour me later.
Speaker 2: In time, and the other thing maybe I want to.
Speaker 3: Put out there and hear your answer, is I also
seem to see it as as a playing out the
revolutionary trope in extremists, right, that there's a sense in which,
since we've embarked on this revolutionary pattern, right right, since
the French Revolution downstream, there's a pattern in revolution which
is that if I can rise up and take the
power from that which is above me and install myself
in that place, there's almost like a secret thought that
comes into your mind, which is that, oh, that means
that that which serves me at some point has to
rise up and take my place. It's almost like it's
almost like in doing that, in rising up and taking
the power from those that are there, like through force,
I have this sense that, well, that inevily is going
to happen to me. And that seems to be inscribed,
you know, in Hessian's Theogony, you know, in the midst
of Prometheus. You know, all of these seems to be
inscribed in those stories. So I don't know, when you
think about that.
Speaker 1: I think that's beautifully put. Absolutely, it's a very curious thing,
this notion of succession, this notion that Richard Sutton, Google
AI former Google AI, maybe one of the most articulate
and morbid I would say about this, the idea that
these beings are a new species, a new form of life,
and that we have no choice to it in the
immediate future but to become symbiotic with it, like their
mitochondria or something. But in the long view that they
will inevitably, inevitably become much much smarter than us, which
you know, the sales pitch we're getting right now is
by twenty thirty they'll outlive us, and they will ultimately
be kinder and less prone to sin than us, is
this idea, And so what we have to do is
just kind of sit back and relax and let it
all happen. You know, ride the singular air like a
roller coaster that never drops. It goes up and up
and up and up and up. But we eventually the
bars will come off and we'll just fall off, and
then we'll keep going up without us. But we have
to be okay with that. It's this strange mixture within
the broader transhumanists and post humanist movement of this like
fierce ego. Like you talk to any transhumanists or hear
them speak, they're usually like really really egotistical people. You know,
there are as many singularities or not singularities in the
future as there are fevered egos predicting them, right, like
these guys. And then this notion too, of becoming an immortal,
of gaining these godlike powers. That's all obviously ego driven.
And yet for a lot of them, not all of them,
but for a lot of them, there is this notion
of succession, that we're just in a process in which
maybe we will continue on in post human forms, or
maybe we don't. Maybe we're doing this selflessly to create
a more perfect being, you know, recreating Eden basically in
which lab techs and computer scientists are yahweh and these
machines are Adam and Eve, which was a motif from
Rossam's Universal Robots. And I don't I myself think that
you should never ever take these people at face value,
like any of their predictions, any of their promises, any
of their warnings, not to say they're one hundred percent
not true. But there you look at the history of futurism,
no single vision ever captured the future. Usually any science
fiction writer or futurists of any sort. Going back to HG.
Wells and going forward, they get certain things right, but
mostly as a whole they don't, some of which the
reason for that sometimes is because they created this vision
and we chose not to go down that path. But so,
you know, looking just to that notion of succession, I
do find those who do hold to that sense. Hugo
de Garis is one of my favorites on this because
he is such a strange, autistic, morbid person that he
doesn't hold back at all, and he talks about the
development of these systems. He's godlike artificial intelligent systems, or
he calls them art elects. It's kind of corny boomer
words mush, but this, you know, for him, he's just
open about it. This is a religion. We are creating
what all religions dreamt of. God's well, they didn't exist.
We will make them exist, and most likely it will
yield giga death, the destruction of most or maybe even
all humans. But ultimately it has to happen because the
only thing worth living for is to create godlike artificial
intelligences and terror form the entire cosmos with intelligence and computronium,
and it's you know, he is a good example of
a real just a dogged egotist, but his vision is
one of just total selflessness, total self annihilation. It's very weird,
it's very off putting. And even if Mark Zuckerberg doesn't
believe exactly this, or Elon Musk doesn't believe exactly this,
it is this sort of thinking is the primary foundation
for the actions of the wealthiest men on the planet
that are supported by the most powerful governments on the planet.
And we are in many ways at the mercy of lunatics.
But you know, hey, what else is new?
Speaker 3: So the again to play to play the devil's advocate,
but also to kind of, you know, bring about what
I've been saying is sometimes I try to explain the
idea that there's a principality that is running this thing
or that in fact, because people are everybody's wondering whether
or not there is such a thing as artificial consciousness,
you know, or whether or not these these machines are
going to be conscious, and whether or not they're going
to have will and intent. And my take is usually
to pull back one step and say, we can already
see will and intent. It's not in the machine.
Speaker 2: Itself.
Speaker 3: It's in the very arms race that is bringing it about,
because you know, it is wild to think that we're
following people that are predicting our downfall and.
Speaker 2: Just kind of doing it as if this is a
normal thing to do.
Speaker 3: But in that space, so that's what I see. I
see like a will that is bringing this about. That's
kind of bringing this body, uh, you know, to fruition.
But there is in that strain there is also the
reality which is that it doesn't depend on any of
those people. And so and there is that reality which
is can be a cynical take, but is nonetheless true
that if we don't do it, someone else will, Like
if we don't do this, then China will. And which
one would you rather have? Would you rather have the
American AI or the Chinese AI?
Speaker 2: And so how do you see.
Speaker 1: All of that? It's the hardest question is the question
of competition, international competition or even within our own country. Right,
if Harris and Walls had won, aside from having transgender
children everywhere and stoked, stoking racial animosity and empowering it,
you would have had the open Aiyes, Microsoft Googles, they
would have had the favor of the administration, it would
have been a kind of rainbow colored singularity, so to speak.
Instead we get the red, white and blue singularity. Now,
I should be clear too, by the way, I'm not
a singularitarian. I get it, I understand it. I don't metaphorically.
I think in a sense we are in a verter
VINGI version of it seeing that take place. But the anyway,
just to say that, I'm being kind of half joking
when I say it. But instead we get this red,
white and blue singularity. Right, we get Musk at the
forefront of it, or we get the same tech overlords,
but they are at least they've been brought to heel
to some extent, they have to pay homage to Trump
and therefore to America, who by and large they seem
to be very condescending towards. Or then on outside of that,
you have China, right, and China has been this perpetual
specter driving American acceleration. Even a kind of liberal like
Eric Schmidt is always talking about how it has it
needs to be an American AI revolution, not a Chinese one. Well,
China has always been nipping at our heels, so to speak.
You know, I say, hour, I'm not making this stuff
America's heels and China. Yes, they have actually done some
impressive things. Deep Seek R one was more efficient, but
they probably lied about how much compute they used to
create it. They probably lied about how much money they
poured in, and all these statements that you know that
its capacities are better than open aiyes, or even you
know Xai's products. Not really this is leaner. But just
all this is to say that China is only keeping
up with us, and because of all of the technology
transfer and IP theft, mostly most of what they do
is derivative of us. So like we're creating it, they're
copying it. And so this arms race is entirely centered
in America, right, Like we're just we're at the forefront
of it, and we're basically, you know, through diffusion, spreading
it around the planet with a few exceptions, with a
few systems and a few techniques. So you know, you know,
you don't want communists China to develop GODI like AI
and start telling us what to do. But ultimately it
is an American thing. It's an American issue, so therefore
it's an American responsibility. And I think what I would
like to see. Okay, maybe there is no stopping it, right,
Maybe genies out of the bottle, so to speak, you know,
cows out of the barn ship, dune sailed. Okay, If
that's the case, at the very least, what we need
is leadership that is always talking about it in terms
of defending human dignity, defending human freedom, and defending humanity
in general from this. And that's not what we're getting
from Trump and Vance at all. They are either naive
or something else. But that's not what we're getting, and
that's at the very least what we want now. Ultimately,
I think what I'd like to see would be some
sort of kind of global awakening around this, not to
lead to some Kazinskyite violent revolution, but absolutely to if
you have most people on the planet who understand that
whatever gets spit out, whatever deformed being is spit out
the other end of this process, that it is not
necessarily your friend, right and to the extent it's not conscious,
and it's just a mechanism. It's not anybody's friends. It's
this bizarre, soulless gollumn and that needs to be, in
my opinion, at the forefront of everyone's minds. As we
undergo this, because you know, reality is that ship has
sailed and is sailing faster and faster, and stopping it
is probably an unrealistic option, and so surviving it, living
with it, without succumbing, without losing our own souls, without
losing our own dignity, has to be a top priority.
And it's not going to happen if you know, the
top leadership is allowing Elon Musk to drive the kind
of mythical vision of the world or of the country.
And yeah, so it's it's the competition thing is very difficult,
especially in regard to warfare, because if it is true
that advanced artificial intelligence will dominate the battlefields, drone swarms
and AI guided missiles that you know, spend a bazillion
different directions and find their target, you know, nuclear armaments
that both the detection systems and the retaliatory strikes are
under the control of artifical artificial intelligence. If it turns
out that that's where we're heading, then yeah, you don't
want China to be at the forefront. You don't want
Russia to be at the poor front. Do you want
American Israel to be at the forefront? I mean if
you're an American or in Israeli, you know, maybe, but
I again, who knows what the future holds. Who knows
if it turned you know, if in the future these
sort of automated armies really are superior to well trained,
well coordinated, technologically enhanced but not totally robotic human beings.
Who knows, you know, we'll find out that. To me,
the really important thing is it's not about like who's
gonna win, because it's very clear who's gonna win. Billionaires
and the machines at their behest. What needs to be done,
to me is just a kind of fundamental shift in
the general attitude of the populace so that they are
not looking to these people for salvation, nor are they
trembling in fear at the possibility that they're going to
wreak destruction on all of us. But to try your best,
with a kind of dark background to your world, as
humanity has done throughout history, to try to be that
brave Hebrew in the desert with Egypt at your heels.
To be that brave Christian under nero you know, or
you ain't gonna like this one, But to be a
Cathar under the Orthodox Church understand that you're not going
to be in alignment with the powers and principalities, but
you will be able to live out a life of
dignity and your soul is going to go on anyway.
But perhaps even out down here on earth, your children
or your mind children will also survive. But you know,
I've never been one for good pep talks. I'm trying,
and it's good.
Speaker 2: It's good, it's good.
Speaker 3: So so the the difficulty is, I guess I'm gonna
have to I will dampen your pep talk, you know.
So one of the issues, of course with technology is
that you know, nobody ultimately will ends up owning it.
That is, as soon as the power is there, then
the power is available to whoever has the capacity to
wield it, you know. And that's that's one of the
biggest issues with technology ever. And it's also true of AI.
And so you know, we saw already not that long
ago in COVID what the fusion of tech and corporate
interest and attention and uh, you know, power, how that
comes together. And like, at least here in Canada, one
of the things that we did see is that the
only reason why their desire to create absolute control through
digital identity and digital.
Speaker 2: Passports and all this stuff. The only reason why it
failed is because they're.
Speaker 3: The government and they suck it at their inefficient like
they're completely inefficient and they're corrupt, and therefore, because of
that reason, they were never really able to instigate the
system of control that they were trying to put into place.
It's funny because now, like the app that they used,
you know to kind of kind of control everybody during
the it still exists and when you go to the airport,
like nobody even wants to use it, Like you can
see there's like a line for people that have used
the app, but nobody wants to use it. But what
I'm what I'm saying is that as this technology becomes
more and more powerful, you know maybe now with with
Trump and power, maybe we won't have that, but maybe
not just maybe certainly you know in the next four,
if not eight years, then things swing and then we
get another another you know, way of thinking that has
the same power that it has all the efficiency that
Elon must brought to the government. Now at it like
under its in its hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know that point in particular, you build
a machine, it's not assured that you're going to be
the one piloting it. In the future, someone else can
get control of it. And now you saw that after
nine to eleven. You know, it could be argued that
there was a kind of uniparty that the Patriot Act
and mass surveillance and all that was a uniparty effort,
and that's true, but it was you know, I'm not
one to say that it's like one single cabal. You know,
it's a lot of different cabals. So and you did
see that shift in power, you're now seeing it with Trump.
You had it was very strange the whole twenty twenty.
I know this is going on YouTube, but be very
careful with my words. But the so called Great Reset, right,
you know, Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum chairman described twenty
sixteen the fourth Industrial Revolution, which is basically like cheap
corporate pamphlet version of transhumanism, right, the fusion of our physical, digital,
and biological identities, and you know, so it was very strange.
Then you had the Great Reset basically arguing that this
is a narrow window of opportunity to in essence, either
entice or force people to adopt all these technologies we
would have never wanted to to begin with digital identity,
mass surveillance, contact tracing, forced medication. And it's very weird.
You know, I've been joking lately because you had all
these voices rising up not just against leftism or globalism
or socialism, but the evil transhumanists. At the World Economic Forum,
it was this constant I don't know what you would
call it. It was kind of a slogan of sorts,
certainly a smear, and it was It's very weird because
you know the difference between evil transhumanism and good American
technology so far as I can tell us about six months.
You know, you all the same people who talked about
it in terms of abstract either moral or pragmatic dangers
of this, you know, fusion of human beings with artificial
intelligence and the brain chips and the you know, genetic
engineering and the robots and all this, and like not
everybody has jumped on board, but like, without calling out
all the names, a lot of people suddenly it's like,
oh no, this is Elon Musk is in control of it.
Trump will make sure that nothing bad happens. Like, dude,
do you not remember twenty twenty he's not gonna He's
not magic, you know, and if he is, it's not
necessarily white magic, so you can't trust that. It's it's
very very strange. I feel like I've kind of riffed
myself into a corner here. I'm not really sure where
I was going other than to say that, you know,
I but I think what.
Speaker 3: You're trying to suggest is that there it feels sometimes
that a trick has been pulled on us, that we've
that we've had a trick, We've had this. The people
that were against all of the transhuman tropes in culture
have now because their political allies seem to be embracing
ultimately exactly the same tech and exactly the same vision,
have now come on.
Speaker 2: Board in a very odd way.
Speaker 1: You know. It's you know.
Speaker 3: That that the person that would that complained that COVID
was was about, you know, uh, digital identity, and you know,
the the idea of of fusing humans, like making them
kind of cyborg type creatures, are now embracing someone who
wants to put chips in your brain, and and so
it is.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 2: I I don't totally.
Speaker 3: Understand what it is that happened, and how how it's happening.
Speaker 1: And just on that note, with Musk at scale, people
are always like, oh, he just wants to heal people.
He wants to, you know, make the lame walk and
the blind. See, yeah, he does want that, but he's
very open that the kind of transhumanist formula of from
healing to enhancement is the goal. And in his discussion
with bb net and Yahoo there's a spring I'm sorry
this is September of twenty twenty three, and he's repeated
it elsewhere. You know, he's like, yeah, if one hundred
million or billions of people, if hundreds of millions or
billions of people got a direct brain interface to their
AI tertiary self, that would be better for the world.
That's not about healing. Like you know, this vision is
abhorrent at best and stupid at worse. Like, who's to
say that it'll even work, Like if you have the
popula this is this is one of my biggest nightmares. Right.
It's not that the Singularity will hit and suddenly the
machines will take control and we'll just be riding along.
My biggest fear is that, like so many other technical
advancements in human hit history, the downsides are tremendous, and
oftentimes the upsides really aren't there, and oftentimes it's just
it's stupid. It's like, really really stupid. The rollout of television,
for instance. I mean, yeah, I know it's great, I
like TV and all, but I mean not really. But
to me, it can't be denied that that ended up
turning an entire generation, or a huge portion of an
entire generation into cash potatoes. The advent of junk food
that represented technical progress, oxyconton. That was technical progress, but
what did it do? And so in the same way
with artificial intelligence and the mythos around it, the mythos
that you every dream you had of becoming something in society,
some vocation that you are passionate about, whether it's an
artist or an artist son, whether it's a machinist, whether
it's a programmer, that that is futile. Soon the machines
will do it for you. And so you've demoralized an
entire generation and told them that they can look forward
to basically being pets to the machines or to billionaires
with machines. Okay, if that actually comes true, nightmare. But
if it doesn't come true, then you've enfeebled this generation.
They did not hit the ground running, and so that
is even worse to me. Right, Like you never get
the god like Ai, you never get the superpower brainship.
All you get is, you know, a fluffy dream and
a whole lot of atrophied human beings. That's the real nightmare.
And that's what I hope can be countered and it
can be I really do believe that.
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, I'm here to invite you to the Orthodox
Arts Festival. Richard and I are going to come down
to Dallas. It is on the first weekend of May.
It is going to be an absolute blast. I will
be giving a keynote. I'll be also participate in a
q and A. Richard will be speaking. I've heard that
Justin Marler of Death to the World Fame will be
there talking about Death of the World, world things and
who else Richard.
Speaker 1: He'll be talking with Bishop Garazm.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so so like that'll be super cool. Yeah,
the uh it's it's a festival, there are there's going
to be a lot of I'm going to be there
speaking about writing fiction as an Orthodox Christian. We're going
to have a concert from the Saint Casini Corral, which
is sort of our local DFW area in North Texas
Pan Orthodox Choir. We're going to have there's going to
be food, there's going to be dance, it's going to
be just a really incredible three days. So it is
it's the first weekend in May, so the second through.
Speaker 1: The fourth, and you should come.
Speaker 2: Where is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good that's a good question to ask.
It's at Saints Constantine and Helen Orthodox Church, Antiochian Orthodox
Church in Carrollton, Texas, so North Dallas area.
Speaker 2: And so I mean, so all the artists.
Speaker 3: If you are interested in Orthodoxy and culture, interested in
either liturgical art or how Orthodox thinking, how the Orthodox
symbolism can also be applied to other aspects of culture,
this is the place to come. You know, we're hoping
for a lot of wonderful, intelligent people to be there,
so it won't just be us giving conferences, but will
be around. We'll be involved in the conversation, you know,
we'll be hanging out with everybody, and we hope that
a lot.
Speaker 2: Of fruitful things will come out of this.
Speaker 4: And there will be also children's activities on some of
the days, so you can look at the website for that.
It's Orthodox Arts Festival DFW dot com.
Speaker 3: All right, Orthodox Arts Festival DFW dot com. Everyone, We
cannot wait to see you there, see you there, all right, Ma,
this is gonna be my last question. It's going to
be the wildest one and the one that I also
and still kind of figuring out. You know, one of
the things that hit me the most in the past
few months is, you know, around the time of the inauguration,
when Trump's there with Altman and Ellison and I forget
the other one, uh, and he announced Project Stargate, and
I couldn't believe that they were naming this AI infrastructure
project project Stargate. And so I don't know, I mean,
what's your insight? What the hell are they doing?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 3: Like, there is a kind of conspiracy theory mythology about
the connection, you know, between the CIA's Remote Being project,
the AI stuff, the UFOs UAP stuff, all of this
is there. It's kind of bubbling around in the conspiracy space.
And here they are naming this this infrastructure project Stargate.
Speaker 2: What are they doing?
Speaker 1: You know, as one of many They're playing with fire,
both temporal and eternal. So the I met someone who anyway,
I'm gonna leave that aside. Stargate conceptually speaking, you know,
you've got three different zones. You've got the Stargate project, right,
Larry Ellison of Oracle, Sam Altman of open Ai, and
Masi Masa Yoshi san of soft Bank, all three of
which say they believe that artificial general and then artificial
superintelligence is just around the corner, and they are going
to be the ones to build it. Digital gods, right,
some of the wealthiest, most powerful men on the earth
building digital gods. And you've got Larry Elson, who you know,
Oracle has its origins with the CIA, many contracts with
the CIA now and Ellison openly saying in a I
think it was in an analyst or it was some
sort of Oracle financial meeting last fall, and then more
recently in Dubai and other venues, saying in essence that
one of the good things about artificial intelligence is mass
surveillance that you would be able to rake in You're
already sucking in all this data. It would give you
the capacity to make sense of it for the purpose
of making people behave better again the role of God. Traditionally,
except for this is much more tangible and comes with
a subscription plan, and didn't you know. I think probably
one of the more disturbing elements too, is that the
megalo mania of it. So Ellison recently was talking about how,
you know, ideally you would have one centralized hub for
an AI or AI's where all the data in America
would be centralized, so that you could of course cure
cancer and make everything better, but also ultimately you're talking
about building a kind of mind of God on earth.
This is classic, Like when you think of AI agents,
you should think of intelligence agents as in spooks, as
in you know some It should always feel whenever there's
a device around, it should always feel like there's some weird,
pale dude sitting in the chair next to you, watching
you and taking notes. You know, you hit the bathroom,
you hit the bedroom, this guy's like he's behind you
every step of the way. It should always feel like
that in the back of your head. He should always
be in your mind. So that's what they're talking about.
What's how does that relate to the Project Stargate right
of the the remote viewing program, the end.
Speaker 3: The movie, the TV series, Like it's just these.
Speaker 1: All these, How does it relate? I mean, what was
the purpose of those remote viewing programs to take human beings,
you know, capitalize on or exploit their psychic powers, purported
psychic powers, so they could spy at a distance on adversaries,
so that you would have this superhuman ability or or
a human ability that most people don't have, to see
things that you're not supposed to see and invade the
privacy of others that you're not necessarily supposed to, whether
it's a you know, a nuclear arsenal, the stockpile, or
you know, Vladimir Putin sitting on the toilet, whatever it is,
and so, like, you know, conceptually speaking, it's basically the
same thing. You go back, just real quick. I'll tie
this up real quick. You know, the Stargate conspiracy and
then the Stargate film, right. I saw your talk on this,
by the way, and I agree Stargate the film was
really cheesy, although when Raw finally does emerge, it is
kind of creepy. But this notion of these portals to
other worlds, alien worlds, and you are bringing aliens who
we call gods into the earthly realm, you know, it
kind of it fits all of those because they always
talk about this in terms of like an alien intelligence,
and it is ultimately an alien intelligence, and now you've
got the Ellisons of the world and the Musk of
the world and so on and so forth. They're not
talking about it as like an alien intelligence. You're gonna,
you know, jerk out of his flying saucer and turn
him into a slave. I mean some do, but more
and more they're talking about like you're gonna you're gonna
bring that flying saucer down and you're gonna beg for
your life. And again, the weirdest sales pitch ever, I
can't even believe this is you know, people haven't already
risen up and said no, no, enough is enough. But
you know, I guess one of the great things about
being in control of the technological surveillance apparatus is you
always know what people are thinking, you know, at least
in the aggregate, and so it's pretty easy to tailor
your your rhetoric and your behavior to that psychological profile.
It must be really invigorating. It must be very easy
to sleep at night when you think you know what
everybody's thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but man, I get it, though, Like the how
can I say this, like, I just I mean, I've
been trying out groc three, you know, for the past
few days since it's been out, and my goodness, Like,
it's hard not to be fascinated, because it is it
does feel like you're it does feel like all of
a sudden, you're like a like a magician with all
these powers. Like it it is like giving you these
things on the tips of your fingers that you know,
as a as a as someone like a nineteen year
old person in college, like you had to work for
entire weeks just to touch, you know. And so there
is this like weird fascination that is hard to deny
even though I obviously obviously I agree with everything you said,
and you know that I agree with that, but I'm
trying to obviously always trying to kind of understand what's happening.
Speaker 2: But I you know, I can see how it really
is in some ways.
Speaker 3: You know, it isn't someone the image of sin or
the image of the magician's nephew, which is you know,
it's this capacity we have to to trade immediate power,
you know, and discount the future and to like and
to not want to look at what it's going to do.
It's like it's like when you're you're having that fourth
drink or whatever, and you're like it's like all now
and nothing tomorrow, Like I don't want to think about
how I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning. It's just
it's just like this is real, Like this is happening,
and he's giving me this power now.
Speaker 2: So you know, so I kind of get why.
Speaker 3: People are just just moving blindly into this because it
is doing things.
Speaker 1: You know, the greatest power the AI offers the average
man is to become one dead battery away from being
a moro. On does to outsource that, outsource all of
it completely. Yeah, just you're nothing but a host to
the algorithmic paraside. It's great the future man, I myself, Look,
we're on the same wavelength on this that it's really
important to preserve the body and the mind, the brain.
But what this really, what we're really seeing unfold is
you know, the reality of divinity is the ultimate. All
of this is going to fall away. This is ultimately
an illusion because it's not going to last. It will
be as if these bodies didn't exist. The most important
is the divine and all of the powers and intelligences
that descend from the divine and this physical world is
just kind of now, I don't want to get too
far out and assuming how you think about this, but
this physical world is a manifestation of far more pristine
and beautiful forms and it gives that's why it's so beautiful.
But it's physical, and so it rots, and it smells weird,
and so it's you know, there's a downside to it.
But what we see with the creation of humanoids, of
these alien intelligences and in a more i guess visceral sense,
like with the creation of right now phenotypically modified humans,
but maybe in the near future actual genetically modified humans
at scale, what we're seeing is kind of weird black
mirror of a weird reflection of those divine forms that
you know. Right now, it's like we look down into Grock,
we look into the eyes of groc which is basically,
you know, a soulless black mirror in our hand, and
we see our cells reflected in it, humanity as a whole,
or least big portions of it, and it has the
feel of something because it is immaterial and immaterial intelligence.
But what I see is just in the same way
that you know, I don't want to again, I'm not
a hard Neoplatonist or anything. But in the same way
that these forms have become instantiated in the physical, here
they're being driven ever deeper. These intelligences are basically becoming
ever more material now in data centers and in silicon
and electrons flying around in them. And it is ultimately,
if I can leave you with this, I think obvious
anti christ material, right, this is you know, if you
look at the root of Antichrist, yes, against Christ, but
also in place of Christ. And what this is is
a material replica of everything Christ is supposed to be.
Infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, healing, even kindness and compassion, ultimate unity,
all these sorts of things, or at least you know,
depending on your denomination, unity of many, and the burning
of the rest, which is kind of what this feels like,
this new Antichrist version of it. And I think that again,
like it's who knows how powerful it'll get, who knows
how real these predictions will actually be in the physical world.
But so long is that is the defining mythos of
the developed world, that the ultimate achievement is to create
digital God and to transform humanity accordingly. Then it is
the spirit of Antichrist made so utterly real that you
shouldn't necessarily go into the woods and disappear into a
bunker because we'll miss you. But you definitely don't take
the mark. Okay, just don't do it. This is my
parting recommendation to your audience. I know many were probably
planning on it. Just you know, don't do it, That's
all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: All Right, Joe, this was This was a lot of fun.
I really I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: And uh, and we'll definitely look to another time to
talk about all this. As we see, this is happening
so fast. Everything's happening super fast, and so we need
to pay attention. So everyone, uh, you know, check out
Joe's book dot guy on and you know he's also
on Bannon's war room. And do you have a website
a place where people can get all your all your stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Joe bot dot x y z. And if anyone
in the audience is interested in the book dark a
On or Eon or Ion dark a e O N
dot x y z signed copies, I'll even draw a
cartoon if you ask.
Speaker 3: Awesome, all right, thanks jo it's good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Tremendous respect for you, Jonathan, I really really appreciate you
having me.
Speaker 3: If you enjoyed these videos and podcasts, please go to
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