00:00:00.000Welcome back to Dreaming Against the Machine. I'm your host, Adam Becker. And this week's
00:00:06.680episode is a little bit different. It's kind of an experiment. We're doing a crossover
00:00:10.940episode with our fellow multitude show, Wow If True, which is hosted by Isabel Kim and
00:00:17.120Amanda Silberling. So they're our guests this week, and it's going to be our first time
00:00:22.100having a show where we've got more than one guest on at once. And to explain why I brought
00:00:28.140them on, I need to tell you a little bit more about how I first heard about Isabel's work in
00:00:32.400particular. As listeners of the show know, I'm a huge fan of Ursula K. Le Guin's work. And one of
00:00:39.440her most famous short stories, maybe her most famous short story is called The Ones Who Walk
00:00:43.680Away from Omelas. And if you haven't read that short story, you should really go read it right
00:00:48.360now and then come back and listen to this podcast. But I love that story. And so a couple of years
00:00:54.080ago when I found out that there was a short story that was sort of a riff on that or a response to
00:00:59.920it that was making the rounds on the internet, I immediately went and checked it out. And it's
00:01:04.540called, Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole? And it's written by Isabel. And0.99
00:01:11.580despite that crazy sounding title, it's really an excellent short story and in fact won several
00:01:18.440major awards. And today, in fact, the day that this episode launches, Isabel's first novel,
00:01:26.000Sublimation, is coming out. And I've already read it, and I can tell you it's excellent.
00:01:30.180And so I'm a big fan of Isabel's writing. Amanda is also an excellent writer. She's a tech
00:01:34.400journalist. And the two of them have this podcast, Wow of True, about various extremely online stuff.
00:01:43.820and I am also terminally online and so we brought them on to see how it would go and it was a lot
00:01:49.580of fun and I hope you enjoy finding out just how terminally online all three of us are
00:01:54.100and we'll return to the usual format next week.
00:01:59.640Amanda, Isabel, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.
00:02:03.280Hello, we're excited to dream. Do we have to like go into a, is this like a sleep podcast?
00:02:08.980are we gonna i don't know what i'm i don't know what i'm saying i haven't talked to people all
00:02:14.120day is this the first conversation you're having all day yeah i got an argument on discord but
00:02:22.760that wasn't verbal amanda you're a journalist you should be better at this i was letting you
00:02:27.200take the lead no that's not how journalism works speaking as a journalist no no no no no we are
00:02:34.260the most internet brained people possible uh and clearly the internet is doing wonderful things to
00:02:39.480us i feel like on any given day i either talk to like 12 people or i talk to no one yeah but yeah
00:02:46.100welcome welcome to the show um hi i'm isabel i write science fiction novels and also a bunch of
00:02:52.420others um short fiction stuff and me and amanda have a podcast together called wow of true where
00:02:58.800honestly, the intersection between Dreaming Against the Machine and Wow of True is truly
00:03:04.260just horrible little men. Horrible little men, rationalists, Udowski. Yeah, we have the same0.53
00:03:12.060horrible little man friends. And by friends, I mean people that we spend a lot of time thinking
00:03:17.240about how much they suck, but also get a weird, sometimes a sense of joy of talking about how0.99
00:03:22.660much they suck, but more often a sense of dread and existential crisis. Yeah, I know. You call0.99
00:03:28.780them horrible little men i call them these fucking people um in reality i don't know i i think that0.99
00:03:35.640your term is more descriptive of what they are whereas my term is more descriptive of0.99
00:03:41.580how i feel when i'm talking about i feel like it's similar to when you find out that someone
00:03:47.860has like the same favorite niche favorite band as you where like yeah if you're talking about like0.94
00:03:54.340Elon Musk sucking. It's like, yeah, like, everybody knows that. But then whenever I see0.73
00:03:59.840Eliezer Yudkowsky mentioned in the wild, I'm like, it's our guy, even though I don't like him.
00:04:06.400God, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's our guy. That's our horrible little guy that wrote like
00:04:12.200the Harry Potter fan fiction that like influenced way too many people.
00:04:15.880Yeah, which for some reason I've read all of.
00:04:18.160Okay, and now we're gonna have to explain to our listeners who don't already know,
00:04:23.520You know, I think most of them probably do. What are we talking about? What is this Harry Potter fan fiction? Eliezer Yudkowsky is a guy, and we'll get into that, but he calls himself the original AI Doom guy, and that's not completely wrong.
00:04:43.800But he has a little club called The Rationalists that I write about in More Everything Forever. And he also wrote a, what, 600,000 word long fan fiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is exactly as compelling and reasonable as that name makes it sound.
00:05:12.340I have some questions about doing research for the book. And my question is specifically, did you have to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for it?
00:05:26.780So what did you think about the whole Quirrell arc? What's your take on H-P-M-O-R exclamation point Quirrell?
00:05:34.460Welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine. This is where we review Harry Potter fan fiction. That's what this podcast is now.
00:05:40.640I have to defend myself. It's not even a defense, but back in the old days when J.K. Rowling didn't talk about stuff and I was like a child on the internet, I was very deep into Harry Potter fandom, which now I don't want anything to do with her.
00:05:58.040So that's, you know, because she's one of the horrible little guys now.
00:06:01.820yeah that's true yeah but harry potter and the methods of rationality had a reputation for being
00:06:08.040the most divisive harry potter fanfic and in 2019 i was living in laos for one of those weird like
00:06:18.760you graduate college and then you get sent to a country to like do a weird non-profit job and
00:06:24.500it's kind of weird and there's no infrastructure and you're like 22 and you're like i'm in laos
00:06:29.560what's happening. I was like rereading the Harry Potter books because I was like so uncomfortable
00:06:34.100that I was like, I need the comfort thing. And then I was reading a lot of fan fiction. And then
00:06:39.000I was like, it's time for me to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in Laos. And then0.98
00:06:44.060I had really bad food poisoning one weekend and I read all of it and it didn't make the food
00:06:49.620poisoning better. And I wouldn't recommend that experience. Yeah, I was going to say,
00:06:53.760are you sure that you were vomiting because of food poisoning? How do you know that it was food
00:06:58.060poisoning and not harry potter and the methods of rationality you know this is a good point
00:07:02.660because the food poisoning happened when i went to dinner with three other people and we all
00:07:07.620ordered the same thing and i was the only one who got food poisoning so this is a good point
00:07:11.580you're bringing up that maybe poisoning maybe it wasn't food poisoning yeah it was meme poisoning
00:07:17.360you got meme poison acute meme poisoning i have no excuse for like why did i read the whole thing
00:07:23.800I don't know like I can't defend myself I'm just like yeah it's insane that that happened
00:07:29.380I'm still stuck on you being 22 in 2019 I have children on my podcast
00:07:33.640well I I turn 30 in four days from when we are recording this so um I need my like last few days
00:07:43.980of me being able to be like haha I'm a young person and then when you turn 30 it's like nope
00:07:57.180And yet here we are, equalized on the podcast sphere, having both read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
00:08:03.280Hey, maybe the internet was a mistake. Have we considered that?
00:08:06.080But I guess I think the reason why Eliezer Yudkowsky and Harry Potter of the Methods of Rationality are such, like, a good meme to me is just that, like, something that we talk a lot about on our podcast and that I write a lot about is how internet culture is so closely linked with, like, actual culture and, like, actual politics.
00:08:26.640And sometimes that's really obvious, and sometimes it's in, like, the weirdest, most, like, obscure ways, where Eliezer Yudkowsky is, like, close personal friends with, like, Peter Thiel, and, like, he's right there.
00:08:42.900I mean, Thiel's turned on him a bit, but yes, he is right there. He's in the center of the memeplex, it's true.
00:08:49.180Elon Musk and Grimes met because they bonded over a joke that originated on his website.
00:08:54.500well oh no yeah did you not know that that's no no no i i did know that i just i feel like
00:09:01.860i can't let you say that on my podcast without explaining why that's true but first isabel
00:09:07.620what were you gonna say okay if we're here to talk about like utopian futures we're also here
00:09:11.640to talk about dystopian futures and i think one of the main problems with our current reality is
00:09:16.420that the internet is real life yeah in a good world in a world that we don't live in ellie
00:09:21.620guys are you dowskis harry potter fan fiction remains a fringe thing that like four people
00:09:27.100on the internet have read including me and adam and like and tech has not been eaten by i i don't
00:09:34.300know what i don't want to say eden but i do think that like rationalist and like ai doomer and like
00:09:39.080ai hat like you're not gonna make it or we need to escape the permanent permanent underclass sort
00:09:44.260of thought has like permeated um tech culture which has then permeated politics in a way
00:14:30.140But no, yeah. So as for how Grimes and Mosk are connected to Yudkowsky, oh, God, there's this thing called Roko's Basilisk that is a thing in the rationalist community.
00:14:45.980and I explain it a bit in More Everything Forever
00:14:50.680insofar as it is an idea that makes sense
00:16:26.100And Anthropic was founded by people who used to work at OpenAI who thought that OpenAI
00:16:31.540leadership didn't take Yudkowsky's ideas seriously enough.
00:16:35.440Their actual thought process was the leadership of this company does not take the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality seriously enough.
00:16:46.060So we're going to go start our own company.
00:16:48.600You know what people don't talk about is the craziest thing about Eliezer Yudkowsky is that he's a Harry Hermione shipper.
00:16:55.520like i haven't thought about a lot of the content in harry potter of the methods of rationality in
00:17:07.980the wild because i have some sense of self-preservation but i'm just remembering like
00:17:12.480what occurs in it and like he ships harry and hermione and then hermione dies and then harry
00:17:17.400like brings her back to life but also they're like 12 uh and i think the basilisk actually
00:17:26.220killed her so maybe it was like rogu i don't know i i need to reread this but i also don't need to
00:17:33.680at all don't nobody should go read it um i'm gonna lose the power of speech and then this is just
00:17:39.480gonna be a wow of true episode um all right isabel what's up how's it going in a weird way it's kind
00:17:45.620of admirable that this man was like i need i need to spread my word and i'm gonna do that through
00:17:50.580harry potter fan fiction like if you think about the meta here he does have a point because i didn't
00:17:57.560know what rationalism was until i was like let me read this weirdly divisive harry potter fanfic and
00:18:04.440then i was like what is this ideology and it's like the thing with rationalism which is similar
00:18:11.500to effective altruism just in the sense that like it came out of the same cloth and when you say it
00:18:18.140just as a thing it sounds somewhat reasonable and then when you think further about it it
00:18:23.600quickly just in practice becomes very unreasonable where it's yeah like to define it for people at
00:18:30.380home who are picking this up as their first episode of either podcast and if so go go pick
00:18:35.400a different episode. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I agree. Yes. No, listen to this one. Rate five stars.
00:18:41.700Rate and review. The central tenet of effective altruism is basically you should do as much good
00:18:50.620as possible in the most effective manner. And sometimes that is like earning to give where
00:18:54.420you make a bunch of money and donate it. And rationalists are very much like, how should I
00:19:00.120say this my read of them as somebody who has observed their practices since i was 14 is that
00:19:06.420they love to um invent philosophy from first principles and they want to have a perfectly
00:19:11.520objective view of reality um this all of this kind of merges together into a sort of like um
00:19:17.840quasi-religious sort of like group like think which um has um created both um open ai and also
00:19:28.100like the zizians and the murders related to the zizians um i'm not gonna explain that one and
00:19:33.260then no no we're not doing the zizians but then it's like yeah sorry i thought about the zizians
00:19:41.840and i was just kind of like that's the end of that sentence it's like in practice the idea of
00:19:46.780trying to view the world objectively is fine but then you end up with sam altman somehow yeah
00:19:52.700Because they get captured by the idea of a long-term future risk of AI and essentially, quote-unquote, misaligned AI.
00:20:00.620And that's another one of those ideas that should never have escaped the boundaries of the Harry Potter fanfiction from which it sprung.
00:20:07.200And now misaligned AI is something that is being talked about in the White House.
00:20:20.700Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, the reason that this podcast is called Dreaming Against the Machine and not called These Fucking People is that, like, I didn't want to have a podcast where I spend every week, you know, going through exactly why these fucking people are awful.0.96
00:20:40.400But that being said, it's still a lot of fun to commiserate with other people who know about why they're awful.0.96
00:20:49.120Um, I, I am, I'm going to put each of you on the spot individually. I have, I have, uh, one thing for, for each of you. Um, and, and you both know what it is. It's not like I'm springing this on you, but, um, uh, Isabel, you posted on blue sky as you were reading my book, uh, with, with a picture of more everything forever with a crab on it, which I would like you to explain.
00:21:13.880But you said that this is a book that is bait for me specifically. And this is me being very indulgent on my own podcast. Tell me why the book that I wrote is bait for you specifically.
00:21:25.900i mean i feel like it's explained by the fact that i was reading fucking astral codex 10 when0.63
00:21:31.000i was 14 no it was made for me specifically because um of a couple of reasons first i um
00:21:36.900i have a lot of friends who work in tech and obviously me and amanda talk a ton about like
00:21:41.720what is going on in the tech world because of um the podcast and also i write science fiction
00:21:47.420and writing science fiction right now sort of means that you are in a war against the ai bros
00:21:53.580on the side of um words and not um code um and so this was bait for me specifically because every
00:22:01.740chapter was truly about some dude who like like some parcel of like um the the movement that goes
00:22:08.940from like the extropians to like you know the current like rationalist movement and the guys0.95
00:22:13.440surrounding this that me and amanda have talked about and who suck and we know they suck and we0.94
00:22:17.420know too much about them and describing what they've done and then my blood pressure is rising0.90
00:22:21.560And then you kind of just, like, punctured a balloon and go, like, here's why they're wrong.
00:22:29.360Yeah, we do occupy—this is a little bit of a tangent, but I do think it'll amuse you.
00:22:35.340So, Isabel and I have been on a trip to an island multiple times with, like, 20 other people.
00:22:44.380You're describing this so suspiciously.
00:22:47.160Yeah, this—was the island owned by Epstein?
00:22:50.340this island is owned by a nice family in connecticut isabel why don't you take a
00:22:55.940crack at this how would you describe it so me and my friends discovered that you can rent this um
00:23:00.820like island and a lake in connecticut if you have more than 20 people for less than 500 per person
00:23:05.080this was really exciting to us when we were like 24 25 it's still pretty exciting yeah and that's
00:23:09.980also definitely not epstein's island um please continue it's a very particular mix of people
00:23:16.560where it's like all of like isabelle's like weirdly close-knit group of friends from high
00:23:22.220school and then they all invite a couple people and then you get to 20 but some of those people
00:23:26.920like work in tech now or like are tech founders so then last year i ended up in a situation where
00:23:33.740it was the third time that we did this trip which isabelle wasn't there this time because she was
00:23:38.540at the hugos just whatever um just on a panel of george r martin and i suddenly realized i was in
00:23:46.180a situation where i was on an island with three people who were founders of ai companies and they
00:23:53.280only wanted to argue with each other about ai and it's a big island but i kept actively like
00:23:59.360i was like actively trying to get away and then one of one of the three founders whose company
00:24:05.280i think is the most successful out of the three which is funny was like hey guys i think amanda's
00:24:11.080trying to like not listen to this argument but like you keep going into different rooms and then
00:24:17.420amanda happens to be in the room that you guys are going into and what if we didn't so that's
00:24:22.480how i ended up on an island with three ai founders is this nothing maybe no that's one of those
00:24:27.140situations where you you question all of your life choices how did you end up in that situation what
00:24:33.600led you there um but isabel meanwhile was that was at the hugos i was having a very different
00:24:40.200surreal experience which is being on a panel was um george r martin and also like putting him on
00:24:46.400the spot and making him laugh completely unrelated topic but my father-in-law went to high school was
00:24:53.140george r martin so had a yearbook that was signed by him because they used to talk about comic books
00:24:57.980and stuff like that because they're old men so yes at the end of the panel i was like um so i told the
00:25:05.160other panelists beforehand and it was like becky chambers and like john scalzi this was like a
00:25:08.500panel like i don't know why i was there i shouldn't have been on this panel um i disagree we'll get to
00:25:13.460that in a minute but then they were like yes we must pull this prank on george um so at the end
00:25:20.060of the panel i like spring hello can you sign this yearbook and then it's on the page with his like
00:25:26.060high school photo that he has signed before and then he talked a little bit about like being in
00:25:32.020high school and it was honestly incredibly wholesome oh that's that's adorable but for
00:25:37.600our listeners who don't already know uh and i mean we we record the intros for dreaming against
00:25:43.340the machine after we do the conversation so i don't know what i'm going to be saying about
00:25:47.100either isabel or amanda in the intro to this episode oh man um but isabel uh i first encountered
00:25:53.200your work i think the same way that a lot of people did when i came across your short story0.69
00:25:58.360why don't we just kill the kid in the omelas hole uh which is uh which which won you a hugo0.86
00:26:06.220award right or no it won you a nebula award it won me a nebula and a locus award it got me0.98
00:26:12.080nominated for it was a hugo finalist and then it lost to another story which was like also like
00:26:17.440solid i mean i can't really complain i was up i got to do a bunch of cool stuff like yeah
00:26:21.580wikipedia page for it but now it's fine yeah that's amazing no you i mean i don't so get on
00:26:26.440that listeners no it's it's an incredible story and i i came across it actually toward the end of
00:26:34.700edits for more everything forever and uh and have the reaction of oh omelas i talk about that in my
00:26:42.640book yeah and i had the reaction reading the book of like hey omelas i talk about that in my story
00:26:47.800yes you guys are the spider-man pointing meme oh no
00:26:53.220um yeah that was a story i did not expect to get as much traction as it did because um
00:27:01.420okay so i write a lot of like short science fiction which is a career choice that you
00:27:08.820should only make if you are living in the like the 1950s this is not this is not like like the fact
00:27:15.120that i have like a writing career from writing short science fiction stories is an anomaly in
00:27:20.680like 2026 yes that that is true yeah and that one was very much a story that was written for four
00:27:27.940people in a discord server to make them laugh and i did not expect um what felt like everyone
00:27:34.640in the science fiction universe to read it including like people who i read as a teenager
00:27:38.860yeah and go like yeah this is this says a lot about the world and i was like i guess it does
00:27:43.820i just didn't expect all of you to read it this is very scary well i okay now i'm going to put
00:27:49.800you on the spot in a way that i didn't prep you for there's a particular line in there that made0.68
00:27:54.340me absolutely just irretrievably lose my shit i think i think i may have actually had to walk0.93
00:28:00.240away from the computer and then come back um and it's the line i'm an accelerationist0.91
00:28:06.580i had to include it because like god this is okay so um if you at home have not read the story
00:28:15.300first go read ursula k leguin's um the ones who walk away from omelas and then go read my story
00:28:19.540and then read that line specifically but i was specifically thinking about the tendency within
00:28:25.240um like rat adjacent communities or acceleration or like tech communities to try and have your
00:28:32.040cake and eat it too or like if we or like the tendency for certain philosophies to be like
00:28:37.520we need to make things break faster or like the um move fast and break things or yeah that whole
00:28:43.680um sphere of thinking and how my story was sort of like it was in some part a discussion of the
00:28:49.880way things get talked about online and many of the online communities and that the accelerationist
00:28:55.740movement was one of the ones i was thinking about yeah i i do think it's funny when like when people
00:29:02.900were talking about your story when it was going viral and there were some people that were like
00:29:06.840this person is terminally online and it's like yes you fully got it yes like it is something i do
00:29:14.280enjoy about isabel's fiction is that like a sign of many good writers it sounds like her
00:29:22.360but also it's deranged so it's like this is just how isabel talks like isabel would just call
00:29:28.220someone a load-bearing suffering child like in conversation so why wouldn't she in a story1.00
00:29:32.720It's a fucking fucked up thing to call somebody, dude.0.99
00:29:34.580Well, you call the Omelas kid that.1.00
00:29:36.540If we were just having a conversation about the story, the ones who walk away from Omelas, I could see you saying that casually in conversation.
00:29:44.500Yeah, but the load-bearing suffering child is one of the great phrases of the story.
00:29:48.940But as for being terminally online, I mean, I knew that you had to be terminally online the minute I saw a different line in the story.
00:29:55.920You cannot kill me in a way that matters.
00:29:57.820okay so that is a line where i am that is a line that is a reference to a tumblr post
00:30:05.320um yes and i've never i've never publicly admitted that before because i again this
00:30:10.280was made for four people in a discord server i wasn't expecting this is what we this is what
00:30:15.500we want to be doing this is the utopia we want to be embarrassing our guests and making them
00:30:20.740admit things that they never admitted in public before that's what the show is for god
00:30:25.780but yeah like i wrote it for four people sorry yes go ahead no it's from it's from a tumblr post
00:30:36.460uh about someone threatening to kill a fungus you know which which are like functionally
00:30:42.120immortal because of the way that fungi this isn't true but it is um and yeah i thought that was like
00:30:47.840a fun little easter egg for the four people who are going to read it and then a bunch of people
00:30:51.940read it. No, I'm very happy that you did that because I also have a tendency to put Easter
00:30:57.340eggs into my writing. I mean, and I know other authors who do too. I mean, we both know Max
00:31:02.400Gladstone. He does that as well. But yeah, sorry, Amanda, what were you going to say?
00:31:06.480I was going to say something that I don't know if I should say, even though I have said this
00:31:09.780on the internet already. Go ahead. I feel like I'm the court jester of this podcast and this
00:31:14.580isn't helping but so i had never read the omelagh story i read some science fiction mostly just sort
00:31:24.300of as an extension of like i read isabel's things and then isabel recommends things and i read the
00:31:29.500things that she recommends sometimes but like i'm not really of that world and i just never randomly
00:31:34.820had to read the omelagh story in high school so i remember isabel sent me that story and i read it
00:31:44.260And I was like, oh, yeah, this is like an interesting concept about there's like a town and there's a kid that has to like be in a hole for society.
00:31:54.040Like, yeah, I guess I guess that's interesting.
00:31:56.520This is kind of coming out of nowhere.
00:31:59.720I just kind of read it and was like, yeah, this is a story, I guess.
00:32:02.920What I'm hearing when you say that is that you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality before you read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin.
00:32:17.140you see i made i was making a lot of um bad questionable life choices yeah being in laos
00:32:24.620with like no plan you know when you're you're like 22 and you show up in laos and then there's
00:32:30.260like nobody there and you're like oh i'm just 22 and i'm 22 in laos and i'm supposed to be doing
00:32:35.340this job and the communist government doesn't want me to be doing the job that i was sent here to do
00:32:40.160this is a therapy session now but also yeah but so but yeah and then that's how i ended up in the
00:32:45.840mental state in which I was reading Harry Potter for comfort. Again, this is before JK Rowling said
00:32:52.200anything weird about trans people. She had said that wizards disappear their poop, but we ignored0.88
00:32:57.580that. And then she started saying weird shit about trans people, and then we didn't ignore that. And1.00
00:33:02.160now we don't do it. Do you think that technology exists in the utopian future? The technology to
00:33:08.780disappear your poop or the technology to ignore JK Rowling? I mean, God, I would honestly take
00:33:14.080the latter. Yeah. I would love her to stop hosting. The thing is, we live in a world where we can
00:33:19.480ignore her, except that we can't because I keep bringing her up because Eliezer Rudkowski wrote
00:33:23.820a fan fiction about her work that is weirdly influential to society. I'm kind of on one today.
00:33:29.460I don't know. Unfortunately, we still live in capitalism, and that means we need to talk about
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00:36:10.380speaking of accelerationists one of the the members of the effective accelerationist group
00:36:19.400is Mark Andreessen and one of the things I I mean Andreessen oh god I really of all the people
00:36:28.840that I've written about he is in some ways my least favorite he's he's like my favorite one to
00:36:33.500rag on oh he has a new post today that everyone's ragging on oh no no no no no no i don't know if0.69
00:36:41.720i can read more of his shit um okay let me let me tell you a thing uh about uh mark andresen first0.93
00:36:48.420of all when i was sending early drafts of more everything forever to to some friends another0.65
00:36:55.820writer was reading chapter five which is the chapter that has a lot of andresen in it and
00:37:01.320And he said, like, I just I can't with this chapter, I can't deal with all of these quotes that these things that these people are saying and like calling themselves effective altruism, but based and and quoting from the futurist manifesto, which we've talked about on here before, in fact, in the very first episode.
00:37:20.060But Andreessen has this thing, the Techno Optimist Manifesto, which is really, really a pretty awful piece of work that I think reveals a lot about who Marc Andreessen is.
00:37:31.800And Amanda, you told me before we got on this episode that you had a particular experience talking about that online, and I would really like to hear more about it.
00:37:42.740This essay came out, which basically, you know the experience where you're in San Francisco and you look to your left and there's, like, massive amounts of wealth and a big shiny tower of, like, needless excess.
00:37:58.080And then you look to the right and there's, like, a guy pooping on the street.
00:38:01.420And you're like, what if these two things, what if this is kind of weird that these exist in the same place?
00:38:07.180And then you start thinking, like, maybe something's wrong with the system.
00:38:11.300But then instead, Marc Andreessen goes, well, if we just keep building tech, then that guy will have a house and a job and like he'll be fine.
00:38:20.260Oh, I thought you were going to say that we could disappear his poop.
00:38:23.320so basically the argument of like let's ignore all societal injustice because tech will make
00:38:32.240it better and yeah sort of like adjacent to another argument that is happening in tech right
00:38:39.000now where people that are ai optimists are saying that ai is going to be so good that nobody's going
00:38:47.440to have to work anymore and everyone's going to just have universal basic income and no one's
00:38:52.720gonna have a job and we're all gonna be happy and everything's great and i would love for that to
00:38:57.860be true like if no one had to work and we all lived in a nice little utopia where we could all
00:39:02.720just play guitar in a campfire that'd be great but it's not gonna happen and if it did then i
00:39:07.580wouldn't trust those people to make it happen equitably so yeah basically he's just like trust1.00
00:39:13.280and safety departments are stupid like tech ethics are stupid environmentalism is stupid1.00
00:39:19.800Yeah, he's got a whole list of enemies and all of those things are on it.1.00
00:39:42.280And I wrote an essay with two of my colleagues that it was one of those things where, like, one of us should have just written the essay, but we were all, like, a little bit afraid about being so flippant.
00:39:53.880So we were like, if we just, like, put all of our bylines on it.
00:39:57.360But mine was the first byline, so I got a lot of the vitriol.
00:40:02.040And also I came up with the headline, which was often the only thing people read.
00:40:07.820And my headline for this article is, when was the last time Marc Andreessen talked to a poor person?
00:40:13.800Because, like, that's sort of, like, the takeaway from reading this is that it's, like, when you're a normal person and you, like, live in the world and you, like, go to the grocery store and you, like, go on the subway and you are seeing people from all different backgrounds and walks of life and you have a sense of how the average person in society functions.
00:41:31.940And he posted a picture of me, and maybe this is just sort of like me seeing the mirror where I was like, or like, maybe this is like I'm reading too much into this, but with my own insecurities, but I was like, oh, he's like making fun of me and calling me fat.
00:41:49.480And then I thought to myself, if I went to prison for fraud for seven years, I also could lose weight.
00:41:54.580Yeah. Martin Shkreli, for those of you who are not as terminally online as all three of us, is best known as the Pharma Bro.
00:42:04.680Like one of the most hated people in society.
00:42:08.900I was going to say one of the most hated people probably ever in a way.
00:42:12.340One of the few things that the internet has brought us, one of the few technologies that the internet has unequivocally made possible is that, you know, it's made it possible to, for people to be hated by a larger number of people than ever before.
00:42:27.400Yeah, Martin Shkreli, definitely, millions of haters, possibly even billions.
00:42:33.040Yeah, his whole thing basically was, like, buying the rights to make certain prescription drugs and then driving up the price, like, very insanely so that people that, like, needed a medication to live had no choice but to pay a lot of money.
00:42:49.660And then he went to jail for fraud and then he got out.
00:42:53.720Yes, and along the way got the only copy of a Wu-Tang album that existed.
00:43:00.660Yeah. He's also the center of a kind of memeplex, I guess. But yes.
00:43:04.820Yeah. It is kind of funny, like, being a woman on the Internet and people are trying to call you dumb.0.98
00:43:13.340And then you're like, you were so dumb that you made millions of people hate you and went to jail for trying to make money in a way that indisputably united everyone in an unprecedented way of deciding that you are the one most unethical man on the planet.0.97
00:43:31.280But also something I realized over the time of being a woman on the internet also and having friends that are women on the internet is that no matter what you look like, you can't win.0.98
00:43:40.440Like, you could be like Helen of Troy and they will find something to criticize about your appearance.
00:43:50.640Well, it's because the crime is being a woman on the internet.
00:43:53.220And that is a serious crime that I should think about, and if I go to jail for seven years for fraud for being a woman on the internet, then maybe I will see if I can make my body more pleasing to Martin Shkreli.
00:44:10.080That's a new sentence that no one's ever said.
00:44:12.860I agree. Yeah, no one's put those words in that order before.
00:44:16.180What I do think is sort of interesting is that it is the revealed preference of guys like Martin Shkreli and like Marc Andreessen and all of these people posting for human beings seems to go above having a yacht, having fame, having billions of dollars.0.91
00:44:33.300No, like what you see with like, okay, let's go to like, you know, the most basic bitch of these horrible little men, Elon Musk. It is not enough to be Elon Musk. He needs to be funny on the internet. And he can't have that.0.94
00:44:45.720And that's the one thing money can't buy you, is money can't buy you being funny on the internet, even if you spend $44 billion to buy Twitter. And I think that's beautiful.
00:44:54.820Well, I think they don't understand that respect starts with respecting yourself more than you would have to to, like, do the stuff that they do, right? Like, if you have self-respect, you're not going to, I don't know, carry a sink into an office building and then take a picture of it and post it on the internet.
00:45:13.320similar to rococo's basilisk that's also a joke that doesn't really make sense because i get that
00:45:19.420he's making a joke about like let that sink in like the meme where there's a sink at a door
00:45:24.240yeah but like i don't think he knows what a joke is no i'm fairly sure he doesn't know what a joke
00:45:30.680is otherwise he wouldn't take the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy seriously god that's okay
00:45:35.500that's another thing we need to talk about here yeah absolutely how all of these guys look at
00:45:40.480science fiction from like the like the mid 20th century and go achieving this is progress achieving
00:45:48.300this is utopia now granted i like automatic doors as much as the next person but it's a remarkably
00:45:53.900myopic view of the world in that they are looking at a certain slice of science fiction from a
00:45:59.100specific time and place and going like my vision of the future from when i was a child or the media
00:46:03.980that i consumed when i was a child that has to be what the future is and this is what it must look
00:46:08.120like. And also, I don't understand what the culture was actually about. Yeah, I mean, the fact that
00:46:13.480Peter Thiel has said that people should use the science fiction of the 50s and 60s as a roadmap
00:46:19.200of things to do is really telling, I think. And then his description of it was, develop the
00:46:26.620deserts, develop space, develop the oceans. And it's like, develop the deserts. What are you
00:46:31.440talking about, man? I just talked about this on an earlier episode of this podcast, but I think
00:46:36.840he read dune and thought that that was the message he read dune it was like we have to add worms to
00:46:42.380our yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah god speaking of things that i i think i already talked about on
00:46:48.640this podcast like these guys they're they're they're reading comprehension skills are just
00:46:53.220so low and they're and they're critical thinking skills are just gone like one of the things that
00:46:59.360i had to do as research for more everything forever was i i ended up listening to a podcast
00:47:04.080with Andreessen and Horowitz about the Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
00:47:10.400And on that episode, at one point, Andreessen makes the claim
00:47:14.760that the great molasses flood of Boston of like 1919 or whenever it was,
00:47:20.080which was, you know, this huge industrial accident
00:47:22.220where like a giant vat of molasses burst
00:47:25.300and went flooding through the streets and killed dozens of people.
00:47:28.900He referred to that as a natural disaster.
00:53:54.460I want to go back, actually, speaking of people who helped me make this podcast.
00:53:59.260Now I'm going to tell a story that I'm not sure has a point.
00:54:02.060And that's what podcasts are all about.
00:54:03.620Yeah, I was about to say, you know, really selling this episode to people who've made it all the way into this point.
00:54:08.060But the fact that you read Isabel's story without having read the Omelas story first, Amanda, reminds me of a thing that happened in college.
00:54:18.640Again, you know, a great genre of story, a thing that happened to me in college.
00:54:23.220But it is relevant to listeners of Dreaming Against the Machine.
00:54:26.280I mean, the guy who made the logo for the show, Nick James, and the guy who made the music for the show, Jared Emerson Johnson, are both old friends of mine from college who now work in those fields professionally, graphic design.
00:54:40.520And actually, Jared makes music mostly for video games professionally, which is pretty cool.
00:54:45.500But we all lived together in college. And the two of them, as like a side project, it wasn't for a class or anything. It was just them messing around. They wrote a rock opera that was an adaptation of Waiting for Godot called Godot! And the tagline was, the wait is over.
00:55:15.500And Godot shows up halfway through. He's he's the god of rock and roll. And he just he arrives.
00:55:25.120I haven't read that. I have to read that. Well, no, unfortunately, it's not available because the the estate of Samuel Beckett is pretty litigious. But it's had, as far as I know, exactly two performances ever in a black box theater in Ithaca, New York.
00:55:40.220And I went to the second one and not the first one because I, being 18 years old and a nerd and a purist of some kind, although I'm not sure what, decided that I really needed to read Waiting for Godot before seeing Godot, the rock opera.
00:56:00.420And so I finished reading it in time to see the second performance.
00:56:05.140Would you say it enhanced your experience of Godot?
00:56:07.960So, so in Godot, exclamation point, Lucky is a robot who can't speak and Potso is struck blind by the power of rock and roll. And both of those are very, very funny if you've read the play. And they're not as funny, I think, if you haven't. So yeah, sure. And it enhanced my experience somewhat. It's definitely not necessary, though.
00:56:35.500I mean, honestly, really the name and tagline are kind of the main thing, although the music, the music is pretty good. Also, hi, Nick. Hi, Jared. I know you're listening. Anyway, yeah.
00:56:47.000My version of that was that I was adjacent to the creation of Jeb! the musical.