Creationism, AI, and techno-oligarchy: Understanding the new age of pseudoscience

Episode Summary

Donald Trump's second presidential administration has been remarkably different from his first one, primarily through his acceptance of long-standing reactionary goals to attack government and expertise—particularly federal agencies that produce and teach science such as NASA, the National Institutes for Health, and the Department of Education. What’s curious about this assault on science is that while it aligns perfectly with the radical Christian rights goal to destroy education and secular knowledge, the man who is administering the offensive is Elon Musk, a technology oligarch who built his entire personal brand and fortune on the claim that he was supporting science and had a scientific worldview.

Musk’s actions seem incongruous, but they should not be surprising because the ideology that Musk is exhibiting has existed within the Silicon Valley right wing for many decades, a strange mix of poorly understood science fiction, quack nutrition beliefs, and militant metaphysics.

In this episode, author and astrophysicist Adam Becker and I talk about how this mishmash of incoherent thoughts and dollar bills has a history—and an extensive desire to control the future of humanity.

Our discussion is organized around his latest book, “More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.”

The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

03:29 — Ray Kurzweil and the "futurist" industry

06:45 — Techno-optimism's biggest problem is timetables

19:14 — The myth of self-sustaining Mars colonies

23:28 — The religious undertones of techno-optimism

24:00 — George Gilder and Christian fundamentalism among tech reactionaries

34:29 — Bad fiction reading and techno-reaction

38:36 — AI and the misunderstanding of intelligence

44:28 — The problem with large language models

54:00 — Billionaires' flawed vision of AI

58:39 — Carl Sagan's warning

01:05:13 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIE