- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
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.
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technocratic and technological solutions to capitalism have always been the solution of liberalism to the very problems it creates since its inception.
His answer to the billionaires question felt weird. He states that billionaires aren't culpable because someone else would have occupied that space, but they also are praiseworthy for the some of the actions they undertake (e.g. Musk's electric cars). I could understand him saying they systemically fill a role that's necessary under the current economic order (and therefore moral outrage is pointless because we need systemic change), but I don't get the denial of harm and the crediting of success.
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.
Bankrolling every ML insurgency on the planet would quickly ensure your death at the hands of capitalist state.
Well yes, there aren't good billionaires because good billionaires suffer sudden existence failure.
Biden has sat immobile, his body slowly crumbling, within the White House of Terra for over 10,000 standard years. Although once a living man, his shattered, decaying body can no longer support life, and it is kept intact only by the cybernetic mechanisms of the White House and a feeble mind itself sustained by the daily sacrifice of thousands of lives.
Mars Trilogy is good af. A bit dated in the left discourse and technology, but still a much needed story with a good ending.
Read this a month or two ago. Still a bit unsure about the idea of carbon sequestration backed economics, but it's got a whole lot of other stuff (geo-engineering, anti-capitalist, eco-terrorism) thrown in there to make the overall thing optimistic. Who knows if it'll come to pass in the same way (I'm not seeing many moves on #PumpTheMeltwater /s, so it probably won't) , but by god did it actually make me feel hopeful about our future for once.
Rocking out at a festival in utopian immigrant friendly Zurich with my solarpunk airship captain boyfriend. 🙆 🌍 💚
Idealist utopians will invite a science fiction author twice before they talk to an actual scientist :doomjak:
Very interesting listen so far... I gotta start reading this guy's work maybe it will help get me out of the doomer mindset
Lost me at "The Washington Post is doing good things..." at least his SF ideas sound fairly interesting
well thank you for that
well you see i dont know why the most popular tv show isn't this show ive imagined thats vampires vs zombies. the vampires are like the capitalists because they are sort of sucking our blood? and we are the zombies because we are sort of shambling and denied the full experience of our yumanity.
also elon isnt a good guy or a bad guy but he's kind of a good guy :very-smart:
also elon isnt a good guy or a bad guy but he’s kind of a good guy
Yeah, I was wtf too. To write books with timelines spanning millennia he probably needs to be pretty zoomed out. He's probably met the players and spoken at at many paid silicon valley vampire events too tbh.
His books are still almost all essential reads imo.
