Australian Atheists Forum

Speaking as a science fiction writer, I'd like to offer a heartfelt apology for my part in the silicon valley oligarchy's rise to power. And I'd like to examine the toxic role of science fiction in providing justifications for the craziness.

Now I've shouted as passing clouds for a bit—or dangerous marketing fads based on popular entertainment of decades past—I'd like to talk about something that I personally find much more worrying: a political ideology common among silicon valley billionaires of a certain age—known by the acronym TESCREAL—that is built on top of a shaky set of assumptions about the future of humanity. It comes straight out of an uncritical reading of the bad science fiction of decades past, and it's really dangerous.

TESCREAL stands for "transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism (in a very specific context), Effective Altruism, and longtermism." It was identified by Timnit Gebru, former technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google and founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), and Émile Torres, a philosopher specialising in existential threats to humanity. These are separate but overlapping beliefs that are particularly common in the social and academic circles associated with big tech in California. Prominent advocates on the transhumanist and AI side include Ray Kurzweil, a notable technology evangelist and AI researcher at Google, philosophers Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky, and going back a long way earlier, Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose writings brought Russian Cosmism to America. Sam Bankman-Fried is an outspoken advocate of Effective Altruism, another element of this overlapping web of beliefs. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, as noted, both seem to be heavily influenced by Tsiolkovsky's advocacy of space colonization. Musk's Neuralink venture, attempting to pioneer human brain-computer interfaces, seems intent on making mind uploading workable, which in turn points to the influences of Kurzweil and other singularitarians. And hiding behind these 20th and early 21st century thinkers are older influences—notably the theological speculation of 19th century Russian Orthodox priest Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov.

How did this ideology come about, and why do I think it's dangerous?

(Longtermism is the belief that we should discount short-term harms to real existing human beings—such as human-induced climate change—if it brings us closer to the goal of colonizing the universe, because the needs of trillions of future people who don't actually exist yet obviously outweigh the needs of today's global poor. If you accept that it's our destiny as a species to take over the cosmos, then it follows that longtermist entrepreneurs are perfectly justified in moving fast, breaking things, and ruthlessly maximizing profit extraction, as long as they spend their wealth on colonizing Mars. Which is just the first step on the road to conquering the galaxy and a bunch of other stuff like mind uploading, becoming immortal, creating artificial intelligences to do all the tedious work, resurrecting the dead, and taking over the universe. It posits a destiny for humanity, which of necessity makes it a secular religion. It means that if you don't believe in their plans, then you're some kind of anti-science backsliding reactionary heretic. And if this sounds just slightly insane to you, well, that's probably because you're not Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.)

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., is reportedly constructing a top-secret $270 million compound in Kauai, Hawaii, including a 5,000 square-foot doomsday bunker. Guthrie Scrimgeour for Wired:

According to Wired, the Koolau Ranch compound will consist of more than a dozen buildings, including two mansions with a total floor area of about 57,000 square feet, interconnected treehouses, guest houses, recreational facilities, operations buildings… and an underground tunnel that connects the mansions to an apocalypse bunker.

The door in the underground shelter will be constructed out of metal and filled in with concrete—a style common in bunkers and bomb shelters.

According to sources and planning documents reviewed by WIRED, the compound will be self-sufficient, with its own water tank, 55 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall—along with a pump system. A variety of food is already produced across its 1,400 acres through ranching and agriculture. Brandi Hoffine Barr, spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, declined to comment on the size or bunker-like qualities of the project.

Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real

Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook