Link to article (geohot.github.io)
What if the Internet was a mistake? I feel like itâs breaking my brain. It was this mind expanding world in my childhood, but now itâs a set of narrow loops that are harder and harder to get out of. And you canât escape it. Once you have Starlink to your phone, not having the Internet with you will be a choice, not a real barrier. Thereâs nowhere to hide.
Chris McCandless wanted to be an explorer, but being born in 1968 meant that the world was already all explored. His clever solution, throw away the map. But that didnât make him an explorer, it made him an idiot who died 5 miles from a bridge that would have saved his life.
When I found out about the singularity at 15, I was sure it was going to happen. It was depressing for a while, realizing that machines would be able to do everything a lot better than I could. But then I realized that it wasnât like that yet and I could still work on this problem. And here I am, working in AI 20 years later. I thought I came to grips with obsolescence.
But itâs not obsolescence, the reality is looking to be so much sadder than I imagined. It wonât be humans accepting the rise of the machines, it wonât be humans fighting the rise of the machines, it will be human shaped zoo animals oddly pacing back and forth in a corner of the cage while the world keeps turning around them.
Itâs easy to see the appeal of conspiracy theories. Even if they hate you, itâs more comforting to believe that they exist. That at least somebody is driving. But thatâs not true. Itâs just going.
There are no longer Western institutions capable of making sense of the world. (maybe the Chinese ones can? itâs hard to tell) We are shoved up brutally against evolution, just of the memetic variety. The TikTok brainrot kids will be nothing compared to the ChatGPT brainrot kids.