Will and Matt talk to Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy, 2312 and last year’s Ministry for the Future. They discuss reckoning with climate change, science fiction literature as an attempt to conceive of our own future’s history, and what kinds of beliefs humans might need to survive that future.

Will and Matt talk to Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy, 2312 and last year’s Ministry for the Future. They discuss reckoning with climate change, science fiction literature as an attempt to conceive of our own future’s history, and what kinds of beliefs humans might need to survive that future.

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Charitably, he's saying that in the very constrained set of choices billionaires have outside of "Don't be a fucking billionaire" (which might actually be impossible to do once you reach a certain level of wealth) some are making choices that are tactically better, or at least aren't actively deploying the upper atmosphere coal rolling project.

    That doesn't mean they aren't morally culpable though, Musk could conceivably wake up one day having been hit in the brain by a cosmic gamma burst and start bankrolling every ML insurgency on the planet, which is the correct response to waking up as a billionaire.

    • chapofarty [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Bankrolling every ML insurgency on the planet would quickly ensure your death at the hands of capitalist state.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Well yes, there aren't good billionaires because good billionaires suffer sudden existence failure.