I wrote an essay a bit ago on why [[Open Source Dystopia|open source AI]] is bad, a lot of it is spent fighting with humanist philosophy and explaining why pretending why it's real will cause immense problems when that inevitably conflicts with reality. However, antihumanism is the closest thing humanity has to a cognitohazard, it is the most rich and fertile breeding ground for self-imposed depression and insanity. A lot of it's most famous philosophers went insane or killed themselves ([1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land)) ([2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)) ([3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher)) (not all of these can be solely pinned on antihumanism but it's fun to pretend) I've experienced this first hand, maybe we'll talk about it later, but in general I feel a responsibility to produce a coherent and intelligible anti-humanist philosophy for other people to read that won't lead people to kill themselves. It is an enormous leap of faith and requires rethinking almost everything about how you view the world. It's not an easy thing to do if you haven't thought this way for a long time. # Anti-Transhumanism Before we start, the problem with antihumanism is that it sounds evil. Which to be fair, to Americans, it is, as this country was founded on humanist principles. But most of the opposition to it won't be because of the underlying philosophy ([attitudes are changing rapidly](https://x.com/Acyn/status/2006817240851820580)) but because it sounds scary. Additionally, I want to distance myself from transhumanists that think humanity isn't worth preserving or that machines should replace humanity. > To be clear, I think humans don't have free will (antihumanism) but think they are worth preserving (anti-transhumanism). ![[antitranshumanism.excalidraw.png]] So I'm going to call it anti-transhumanism, both because I am actually anti-transhumanist, but also because it sounds less scary than anti-humanism. It's a silly way to combine the words, but I think it'll do for now, maybe I'll think of a better name later. The purpose of these essays is to introduce antihumanist philosophy to the broader public, but also to synthesize it with my own intuitions to communicate that 1. transhumanism is not a requirement for alignment, nor an inevitability 2. we do actually have the epistemological tools to make machines in any format, there is no need to plead with Claude. # Anti-humanism and you The best introduction to antihumanism possible is to treat this document not as some piece of rational knowledge, but to treat it in the way ideas are viewed by antihumanists: as physical things that govern people's lives. The prior section was an example of this, the optics of an idea are part of the idea itself, not just "the way you package it". This is also good [[They are right to ignore you|career advice]]. This means treating you not as a reader to be rationally convinced of something, but as a subject to be manipulated or protected. In the following section I'll introduce you to antihumanism's various infohazards and follow them up immediately with the requisite cogsec both as a way to introduce the concepts but also to protect you ahead of further reading. ## Free will The central tenant of antihumanism is that humans don't have free will and are not rational. A lot of people probably believe this on the surface, but have never actually grappled with the implications. For example: if free will isn't real, is consent real? (no), why democracy if not the "consent of the governed"? (it produces good outcomes) are free markets actually efficient? (kinda) However, it is a leap of faith worth taking, as humanism is filled with all sorts of contradictory nonsense that libertarians are infamous for taking to their logical extreme. It's not a surprise that someone that believes in consent as the end-all-be-all would extend it to children if there is no definite boundary. The boundary is itself the problem, humans don't magically become ensouled at the age of 18, and as I'll argue later, we ought to be paternalistic to adults too. ### You aren't free either However, moving the focus of agency away from the individual is also antihumanism's first infohazard. If you are depressed, keep in mind that you are not a rational thing, your subconscious is being altered by your emotions to prefer pessimistic outlooks on the world. Therefor, engaging in a philosophy who's central claim is that you don't have agency and that the world is governed by forces far more powerful than you is a bad idea. You must internalize *first* that *you* the reader are also irrational, and merely a big blob of neurons and chemicals not actually bound to truth. Depressed people are much more susceptible to fatalism, independent of the actual truthfulness of fatalism. > Because free will isn't real, you are powerless, but because you also aren't rational you can't actually know your fate. ### Life advice I will make a general life advice blog at some point, essentially just instructions on how to fix your life but for now, just maximize net utility assuming you are a chemical reaction and not a rational creature. In the same way there is a net utility of calculating utility (and an infinite recursion of this), there can be a net utility of thinking the thought alone. Thinking about stuff that makes you miserable is just another cost ontop of time and energy, it's no different! If thinking about something makes you miserable, then don't do it, think and do other stuff, think about ways to make friends or build a theory of multi conversation. If you get good enough at it maybe you can fix GPT's personality problem *and* not be lonely. ### Male depression & Antihumanism I know how torturous extreme depression can be, even given a generous prior, extreme options feel preferable. However, however hopeless you think it is, if you are depressed, it is almost certainly not that hopeless. Atleast try fighting for a better world so all the other yous won't have to suffer, after all, someone with nothing to lose can go much further than any sociopath is willing to go. Die for a dream, not for yourself. At the minimum I will write an explicit "male depression and antihumanism" and a longer life advice blog at some point, so just wait for that. I was successful in overcoming it, despite pretty tough odds. If that isn't enough, then just DM me, I periodically check my DMs on twitter. I'm also very good at manipulating people (for their own good), I can fix you. Or wait for the singularity, either we all die, we get infinite hell (and u can go out the easy way) or we get fully automated gay space paternalism. ## Materialism But if no one is in control, why are things the way they are? What forces build civilizations like rivers carve the earth and tectonics raise mountains? There are many of these theories, and the most famous and well studied is historical materialism. This, not communism, was Marx's primary contribution to the world, and it was genuinely earth shattering. Most (real) philosophy since this invention has revolved around this theory. We'll explore other theories too, but this one is special in general but also because it very easily becomes a cognitohazard. It is maybe more complicated than this, but reductively it is the idea that > social institutions, like moralities and political systems, are also subject to natural selection This manifests itself as class struggle where when a political system stands in the way of further economic progress, they are replaced with new ones through revolutions or gradual change. Or, if this is suppressed, other countries that do make the political leap will then progress economically and eventually destroy the other regressive cultures. In the same way that DNA never *tries* to evolve in a way that is optimal, no individual human ever has to actually consciously act in their economic self-interest, it just happens. ### Inevitablism From this angle, the American revolution wasn't "righteous" nor are our rights actually ordained by our creators. Rather, it was businessmen, entrepreneurs and tradesmen that *started out pissed* at taxes and then came up with a post-rationalization on why they deserve to have their interests represented. Then, *because* the interests of businessmen were represented in the government and not the whims of the king, the United States became an economic superpower. So in theory, because capitalism is the most efficient economic system, eventually it'll be maximally efficient, we'll invent everything there is to invent and diffuse it everywhere it can be diffused, and because there won't be any further profit to be made the workers will have all the power and we'll have socialism. ... right? ### Capitalist realism Much of contemporary Marxist philosophy revolves that simple question: *why hasn't communism happened yet?* Eventually we'll go over the other answers to this question, including my own, but the two most notable answers to this question are: 1. **Marx was right**, because of technology, the economy hasn't reached it's stable state yet, thus there remains a need for a dynamic market to accelerate us to the point socialism becomes viable in the same way we needed feudalism before capitalism. If you asked someone in ancient egypt when feudalism would end, you'd consider them a prophet if they were only a few hundred years off. This is more or less [the ideology of the CCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_stage_of_socialism). 2. **Marx was wrong**\*, communism isn't inevitable. Capitalism has grown so powerful that it has taken on a life of its own. At some point, capitalism may become a "feature of reality" itself and we'll lose the ability to imagine anything else. In the same way that humans have to some degree conquered the natural selection of their DNA through healthcare, capitalism will conquer the natural selection of ideologies through imperialism, propaganda and consumerism. This is essentially Nick Land & Mark Fisher's answer. \* it's debated whether Marx actually did think communism was inevitable ### Fatalism So what did Fisher think we should do about this? > He killed himself. Fisher had struggled with depression, and Land on twitter has [alluded to the reason](https://x.com/xenocosmography/status/2042293156398710992) why he took his life. [[Introduction to Anti-Transhumanism#Disclaimer|(disclaimer)]] This is why I chose to write the introduction in this way. Fatalism is the other side of the inevitablism coin, if you can believe that you can have a extremely bulletproof understanding of a high order effect that you can't observe directly nor judge accurately especially when depressed, then inevitably you will also be at risk of believing in the possibility that there is no hope. Obviously, this is retarded, don't fall for it. (Again, DMs are open) ### A bet against Darwinian AGI I'll give my exact critique's of land's determinism in a future essay, but for now consider that if land was right, that competitive dynamics are fundamental to reality, then where is AGI? If all intelligence is simply natural selection, then go stick together a big multiagent market and make a trillion dollars. Maybe even change the LLM architecture, make it a marketplace of neurons or something. # Disclaimer For the record, I read very little, the reason that this and other writings I'll make on antihumanism are so different from how it's usually presented is because my intuitions are born more from life experience than reading. I have friends that have introduced me to some of the concepts, but I found that I never truly intuited them until I deliberated it on my own and synthesized it with other knowledge and experience. This is also why I think the value of reading the source texts is maybe overstated, you're reading someone *else*'s intuitions, not your own! It makes more sense to get the key takeaways and then spend months digesting it on your own than to read what makes sense to someone else. ## Intuition over recall I can claim to have a very good *understanding* of antihumanist philosophy from life experience and an inordinate amount of thinking time, but not the authors and original source text. I am not a genius for having rediscovered all these ideas completely on my own though. I spend an enormous amount of time thinking to myself and even the smallest exposure to an idea is enough for me to synthesize it into a rich understanding, so I can't really claim to have figured it out myself. Real genius is in producing something truly new, maybe one day, but most of these essays won't be that. Humans are just non-linear dynamical systems, after all.