Hello. In... 3 hours at 3pm ET, we're going to get together and discuss chapters 2, 3, and 4 of The Nerd Reich by Gil Durán.

One of the things I unexpectedly really appreciated about this set of readings is that I kind of understand anarcho-capitalism now, as a socialist who is sometimes described as an anarchist (no comment). I want to be very clear that I don't understand an-cap in a sympathetic way; it's more like "I think I kind of understand what a prion is" (without myself becoming sympathetic to prions or anything). Also, Mencius Moldbug sounds like something doctors find in an unfortunate person's brain during an autopsy.

I'm also quite captivated by Durán's observations about all of these figures (but notable Yarvin and Srinivasan) speaking emphatically about the abolition of the American project, and about not attempting to reform flawed systems in the first place. I think this is as good a place as any to provoke a conversation, maybe today among the group, about what abolitionist coalitions may, must, and cannot include.

I think a parallel conversation can happen online about what AI & data center opposition coalitions include, and maybe have some reflections about why (for instance) the STDC movement does not collaborate with x-risk folks. We can talk more about that in the video chat, but uh... I understand that has been the subject of some discourse over the past few days, so I'm sure people will have many thoughts about this. Certainly the book cites the TESCREAL paper that we actually read a couple of months ago (funnily enough, I've thought about pointing to the TESCREAL paper (HTML & PDF formats available) Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres authored on at least 2 or 3 separate occasions since that first time I shared it, before I realized I already used it as one of our additional readings in the past.)

One passing thought - I can't believe in the midst of the discourse around it that I missed that that Marc Andreessen was blathering on about how "We [lol] are told that technology takes our jobs". Andreessen has been a billionaire for more than a decade and hasn't even plausibly arguably been a "worker" (either in the formal Marxist sense or in any normal sense that normal people would recognize) in like... several decades. There are probably younger people in this reading group. Like a man wearing a million hot dog costumes.

When you're ready to join at 3p ET, you can click on this link or you can go here:

https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom

See you then.