Tag: Forced Metaphor

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Community Internet Culture

Day 980 and I Am Beff Jezos

Humans are horny for hierarchy. We are eager to give our power away as a species. Please will someone else just be responsible for making our decisions for us? Can someone point me to the person in charge? “Take me to your leader!”

If someone seems smarter, richer, more capable, more aggressive, heck even if they have better taste than us, they become an instant candidate for us delegating our authority over to them. My most popular blog post ever was about dickriding. Yes it was about Elon Musk’s fans.

I’ll be the first to say that people who court you to gain power should be viewed as suspect. But someone who has power is not themselves always suspect by default. I know it’s a fine distinction. But people fall into positions of authority simply by going out and being competent. Competence is a fast route to power.

Sure being competent has a lot of downsides. Suddenly you’ve got power you maybe didn’t want. We have an incentive shunt power off to someone else as it generally sucks to be in charge. It’s energetically expensive to be responsible. Just ask one of your friends with a toddler.

Sometimes we have to wield power because it’s our job to take care of our corner of the universe. Again ask someone with a toddler. We are in charge of sustaining some portion of the grand experiment called life. Even if it’s just our own families. Even if it’s just yourself.

So why am I titling this post “I am Beff Jezos?” Right now online there is a movement gaining recognition for encouraging people to have agency and build for the future. It’s a movement that wants you to own your own power. And to help others get more power of their own.

One of the anonymous posters associated with it calls himself Based Beff Jezos as a play on Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon and the meme “based” as in Lil B’s “based means being yourself.” It’s a silly joke.

The movement itself identifies as e/acc which is a shorthand for effective accelerationism. It encourages people to do more, build more, take charge of their own corner of the world and make the future arrive sooner. The tagline? Accelerate.

It’s principles are simple. The future will arrive and we should build like it’s coming. Slowing things down, or even worse, going backwards, is not a solution to our problems. We can only go forward. If you’d prefer a driving metaphor, we should accelerate into the curve. Slowing down just spins out the car. Civilization is the car.

So what, you want to just uplift humanity, build AI and populate the universe with the maximum diversity and quantity of life?

e/acc

The movement is more of a meme space than anything else. It is decentralized. I’ve not met anyone that runs it though I’ve spoken to many vocal supporters. And I’ve chatted with folks that are at the nexus of of its online presence. Everyone is positive and friendly. Most of them are anonymous. I’m not even of sure if some of the accounts are singular or plural. Which is pretty cool. It doesn’t have a president or a CEO or even a founder who owns anything with any amount of authority. It could be one dude or multiple dudes gender non specific.

It’s just a bunch of people who make stuff. It’s popular amongst engineers but it’s an ethos that to anyone who can make something. Even this blog post counts. I am e/acc as much as anyone.

Naturally if no one is in charge it’s a bit threatening. If there is no hierarchy how do we control it? If no one is in charge then what will we do if someone under their banner does something bad?

Such is the beauty of an idea. A meme can’t really be owned. A decentralized group of goofballs on the internet can’t really be snuffed out for bad think. Maybe a few nodes go down. They literally cannot kill all of us.

I Am Spartacus

The messages does seem to be resonating. I know being hopeful has improved my mood. A decent number of people who make shit want the future to come a little faster. They want more people with more ownership of the building process.

More complexity and more abundance is appealing even if it seems impossible to achieve. Don’t worry, just build for your corner of the world. Put power and responsibility in as many hands as possible. We can build it together.

You too can have a toddler and own the joy of being responsible for your corner of the universe. It’s dangerous for sure. Folks will tell you for your own good you need to have a hierarchy and someone responsible for the power.

But guess what? It can be you. And sure heads will get bonked. Crying will ensue. Remember I said ask someone with a toddler? What if you are the competent and in charge parent? Shit right?

We’ve got to go forward. I am Beff Jezos. You too are Beff Jezos. And they can’t stop us all from arriving at the future. Go ahead and accelerate into the curve.

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Culture

Day 975 and Escapism

I’ve never really understood why Labor Day weekend was meant to mark the end of summer.

The fall solstice is still three weeks away but kids have back in school for an awkward amount of time that’s too short to appreciate time off. And to not too put too fine a point on it, America doesn’t give a fuck about celebrating labor.

It’s a stupid time for a long weekend. Maybe I’m just always rushing to be out of summer as I find it to be a miserable season. And yet Labor Day is still this iconic last hurrah of a summer with BBQs, time at the beach and long weekend travel as the dominant imagery in America.

Jimmy Buffet passed away today. The Margaritaville singing Boomer beach bum soft rocker making his final exit during Labor Day weekend is an aesthetic I hope brought him and his loved ones some joy. If my legacy was summer, I’d like to go out at the most “end of summer” possible moment.

It’s always sad to lose a cultural touchstone but maybe putting a final note on escapism should tell us all something. Perhaps it’s time to let go of the season of escapism. And I don’t just mean for this year. Maybe it’s time to shoulder the burdens of harvesting what we’ve sown.

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Emotional Work

Day 966 and Permission

I’ve been running a risk analysis on something personal. I think it’s worth considering the consequences of any decision. Especially when you take on some amount of risk.

We live in a time of safety. Some of us run the numbers and assume we will be the worst case scenario. Some of us presume the best case scenario.

Reality is never so black and a white. A risk for one person is good sense for another. We all have different values.

You shouldn’t be looking for permission from life. You will never get it. But you have to decide what risk parameters make sense for you. Maybe you like to play things a little faster. Maybe you like to play it safe.

I do think it’s worth evaluating how much you value what everyone tells you and what you think might work without accounting all the risks. Maybe some things are just worth it.

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Culture Emotional Work

Day 964 and Haunted America

I’ve been getting the sense that more and more of my social circle is uneasy about our cultural moment.

The personal battles being waged are numerous and deadly. The losses feel as if they are mounting even for those of that look objectively successful to the outside.

Health challenges and illnesses are debilitating and expensive. The past traumas of dysfunctional families weigh on the more functional among us. Families struggle to cope with addiction, depression, and suicide. Violence eats around the edges in too many cases.

I see more people pulling back into perceived safety as they look to escape the wounded and the traumatized. We’ve got enough troubles in our own family so why take on problems that aren’t our own?

The ghosts of bad decisions and long troubled histories linger. The weight is heavy and I see people stumbling.

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Community Emotional Work Media

Day 960 and Summer Frailty

Rounding the bend into a thousand posts is teaching me some lessons in humility and frailty. I am reaching to get words word as my mind is slow.

I am not reacting to something in an average way and it’s been a struggle to keep going over the laser week or two. I’ve put one foot in front of the other but I can see that I only slept for a couple hours last night. Ironic to be considering averages when one’s own responses are so slowed.

I am just trying to get through August. If my standards are simply to plod through then any achievement like throwing a successful policy night or recording a podcast for Wealth Actually on early stage venture capital count for something.

Much of my struggle is probably just some better living through chemistry problems. A new addition to the biohacking routine went awry. I’m struggling with the heat wave and the air quality of summer in the mountain west. The long days of bright lights slowly unspooling my sanity as I wait for cooler less cruel months to come. Just breathe in and out and try to eat and sleep.

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Emotional Work

Day 959 and Averages

I did not react to a drug in an average way. I’m really pissed about it. I went in so confident based on what the studies has shown. We’ve got this fantasy of science and specifically medicine that has very little appreciation for what it does to outliers.

We discuss what’s most likely. What’s average. What’s typical. We explain the difference between mean, median and average. We have rigor. We have regressions. We can come to an understanding of what the models agree is conforming to our understanding. You should probably see these results.

And then we gloss over the bad data. The outliers. The grits of sand. The flecks of reality that make your model jitter. The shit that just makes things more complicated. So maybe you toss it out.

And it mostly doesn’t matter. Because your body probably is pretty average. And that’s a great thing. We tell stories about what it means to be unique even as you are no different than anyone else. Pixar movies are about our ineffable spark of humanity soul even as it reflects on how we are all really just the same. Shared human experiences are universal. Probably because our bodies are pretty similar.

I sincerely believed I was average for most of my life. I was raised with that as a value. And now as an adult I see how I’m average in so many ways. But my body will never fully reflect a shared reality. You get to know what works for you even if you know what boundaries are a little different for you.

You’ve got to know the contours in which you are exactly as your reality would indicate. That’s your ego speaking generally. But the ways in which you are not matter too. That’s where you tailor treatment.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 957 and Will It Blend?

We are deep in the dog days of summer. I ran a fever and found myself dead asleep till nearly 1pm as my body valiantly struggled to process deluge of stress hormones I’d let pile up. I missed recording a podcast but the fever broke. I’ll catch up.

Meanwhile, on the website formerly known as Twitter, an epic battle of meaning was waged. The group mind egregore known as “this particular corner of Twitter” asked you to take a pill and/or hit a button.

A classic “my child said” poast with a twist on Newcomb’s Problem and Nash Equilibrium

And thousands of jacked in minds, from neu-fascism-IQers-must-speciate-eugenicists & red-rose transhumanist-luxury-space-communists to normie-Dad-banger-poasters, all raced to decide the meaning of the ultimate symbol.

Who lives and who dies when we can no longer coordinate exclusively within our ingroup?

Absolute fucking chaos. The collective of our shared internet went into a frenzy of consensus making.

Would you walk away from Omelas? Or would you save yourself? Would the gods of rationalism betray your soul with the knowledge that the good of the one can and does outweigh the good of the many?

In which selective phrasing has me deciding I shouldn’t jump into a blender but because I am me I also must immediately counter signal

Are you willing to step into a blender to save the normies? No? Yes? Fuck! Roko (of Basilik fame) redefined the problem space.

And then because we all must troll, we all stepped into a blender for the good of our species. Well, I wanted to annoy Roko. So I said I would when I voted that I wouldn’t. Because all serious social question can and should be trolled.

The choice is yours and yours alone

In the space of a day, we all leapt into the proverbial blender to save the naive, the kind, and the fucking stupid. It’s what Spock have done for us. Pro-social is the logical choice. Or is it? Is it better to be red than dead? None of us know.

I personally hope we all continue to create an eternal refinement culture of love and hope across all cycles of time to come.

I found it to be a privilege to be a member of the hive mind. We are all the alignment. Our consensus efforts inside the plutocrats toy is more likely to bring about the singularity than almost any other activity I can imagine.

It is a privilege to be in the egregore. My smol sensemaker syncretic smooth brain being hooked up into the wider hive for “Red vs Blue Walk Away From Omelas Boogaloo” is quite literally divine. To retweet each others bangers is to see the face of God. Just try and remember the truth. There is no blender.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 956 and A Mood

It’s clearly the deep dog days of summer as I’m in a bit of a mood. I’ve got all kinds of things on my mind and yet it’s slow going executing on anything. The doldrums has certainly gripped me. And yet I take hope.

This corner of Twitter is going through a paroxysmal fit of whether it’s rational to be embracing pro-social behavior. Without having to cite all my sources we had Jane Goodall being packaged into a deceleration meme about removing a billion or so people.

And a guy named Roko was shocked that people might hope the golden rule is a universal ideal. And so a few of us jumped into a metaphorical blender for the good of the species.

So I think my entire mood when staring down the barrel of the future is “what’s it going to cost me in my soul?”

At this stage of the simulation I have to ask
What color are the pills, and how many people are dying?

The cost of knowing it’s not just about us is slamming into the hard reality that you can’t do a damn thing about other people. And so we have to ask if we preserve what we have or do we leap into the great unknown. I don’t know anyone who is in the mood for much safety at the moment. There doesn’t seem like much to be had.

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Aesthetics Internet Culture Media

Day 954 and Frame Jacking

It’s a war of all against all on the internet. And I don’t recall being conscripted into any kind of war but here I am up to my neck in ontological shock and crisis of meanings as I read the news.

Language is a virus. And we are all infected. I’ll let Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory illustrate.

It’s our autonomy of mind that is threatened by this unholy troika of smartphones, social media and linguistic weaponization, and there is no more important struggle today than to defend ourselves against that threat.

Humans have nervous systems that are easily hijacked. You give us something to imitate and within a few weeks we’ve learned a new way to get a social advantage. And so we have massive social cataclysms as the rules change. And the rules are changing fast.

This TikTok about a woman accepting an engagement proposal because the vision of the future scares her? It might actually be an anti-natalist campaign by degrowthers or maybe even Chinese propaganda? Who knows.

It’s not as if America gives a shit about maternal health or women but hey here is a podcast about a porn star who specializes in anime’s less savory fetishes. Is your teenage boy an Andrew Tate fan? It’s time to enjoy a reactionary period.

Obviously this has anyone older than forty asking if the western world under attack. Is questioning liberalism actually the psy-op? Are we fighting amongst ourselves? Do you even know what memetic agents you are infected by?

I sure don’t what brain works in carrying but I don’t think animated porn is for me. But I also got taken in by lots of questionable narratives on modern medicine, fertility and children too. Untangling yourself from the desires you were given is exhausting. Good luck unpacking who jacked your frame!

Categories
Biohacking Politics

Day 952 and Do It Live

I found myself with a bit of anxiety this morning. I was afraid that I hadn’t done enough to promote some of my commitments this month.

This morning I co-hosted a session on nervous system work for founders and venture capitalists with Jonny Miller. Aside from a few Zoom hiccups, I think it well. But with my anxiety all I could think of is how I should have done more. I could have invited more more people, emailed more reminders, promoted it more on Twitter. Just more.

I don’t think my anxiety is about a Zoom seminar. It seems to be directed towards a bigger event next week. I am co-hosting a BBQ at my home for the Frontier Institute in Montana.

I am finding myself fearful that I’ve not not done enough to promote it. I’m afraid I’ll look like a fool and fail at my goal of raising awareness (and ultimately money) for our policy goals. It’s probably irrational but it’s sitting heavily on my emotions at the moment.

I care a great deal about the event being a success. And I have done quite a bit to promote it and invite the right mix of folks who will be interested.

I think even admitting to the anxiety helps me recognize that it’s irrational. I do think the BBQ will be a good time. We will have food, drinks, good company and if you’d like to come it’s on August 16th. Worth a drive into Gallatin I promise.

I wish I didn’t get anxiety about if I’m working hard enough to prepare for an event. The balance between preparing and promoting an event and having it go smoothly when it comes to performing live isn’t an easy one for me. I used to obsessively prepare for everything.

Which would then backfire on me as I’d use all my energy on the lead up and find myself exhausted and frazzled when it came time to be present in the moment for a big day.

So I’m trying to not get too much in my head about if I’ve done enough. What will be will be and I can trust myself to be present in the moment to succeed.

So if you are interested in joining the next Nervous System Mastery Bootcamp with Jonny Miller my code is JULIE and it will get you $250 off. I myself am an alumni of the course and plan to retake it again in the fall. So you’d be taking it with me.

And if you’d like to meet me in person August 16th and you happen to be in Montana I’d love to host you at my home. The topic of conversation will be the Montana Miracle and now we can continue to make the state a place for all to thrive.

Please join Alex Miller, Julie Fredrickson, and Padden Murphy as they host a meet and greet with Frontier Institute’s CEO, Kendall Cotton. We will discuss the recently passed YIMBY policies in Montana’s 2023 Legislative Session and the Frontier Institute’s future plans to ensure Montana is a place that all can thrive.

Come learn about the Frontier Institute’s impactful initiatives, enjoy some delicious food, and engage with a group of fellow Montanans dedicated to knocking down bureaucratic barriers and ensuring opportunity for all. 

Please RSVP to secure your place at this exclusive gathering. The address will be provided upon RSVP.