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Author Topic: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy  (Read 11103 times)

Aqizzar

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The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« on: October 19, 2010, 04:41:22 am »

With all the hoopla over Facebook and Twitter among the chattering classes recently, including a movie that I can't believe anyone on the planet would actually pay money to see, there's a strong wind in the sails of people who insist "e-business" and "social networking" is the wave of the future and will change the way everything does investing and make every young person with a computer and some moxie rich, just like it was supposed to do, oh, about twelve years ago.  Concurrent, you should get to know e-prophet Peter Thiel.  He was the original chief financial backer of Facebook, who handed Mark Zuckerberg a cool half-million to build the ultimate ad-revenue and microtransaction generating website, and then founded PayPal to routinely freeze large customers out of their cash like an international mob bank.  Jacob Weisberg wrote an article about the guy that stopped me in my tracks when I read it, and I encourage anyone to read it.

It mainly relates to a little proposition Thiel recently made; his advice to young people entering college: drop out and start a website-based business, because all it takes is a computer and a little moxie (and six years and a cool half-million) to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.  He'll even find ten people under 20 who's sparkle-in-the-eye he likes the most to give a hundred grand if they impress him, like the Willy Wonky of iCommerce or something.  To get an idea of why this is actually frightening and not just dumb, take the man at his word to the Cato Institute.  The people of the American democracy are angry at the world of venture capitalism, therefore if the world is to survive, that is if fabulously rich people are to survive, democracy has to shape up or ship out.  People should build unregulated city-boats and space-stations to float around International Waters, free of those pesky taxes or labor laws or human rights.  Rich people should linger forever in cryogenic undeath, so they never lose control of their investments and that damn estate tax never takes half-a-percent of your nepotistic gift to the world.  That he's also a flaming homosexual with apparently little regard for the intellectual capacity of women and non-whites is just icing on the graphic-novel villain-esque cake.


This, to me, is the true face of libertarianism, transhumanism, and command-capitalism.  Men with the ambition and acumen to wring people and the stock market out of millions are entitled to set the rules, and it's time for everyone else to suck it up and get with the program, because if you weren't lucky enough to be born rich or screw your way to the top, then you have no right to complain about anything.  Thiel himself means nothing, certainly not to me - as little as a hundred years from now, his permanently frozen head will be mounted on a pillar reading, "I am Ozymandias, CEO of CEOs; look on my clickthrough ye mighty and invest."

It's what he represents that scares me - the already quintessential 21st century attitude - you, yes you, can sit at home naked and crank out a funny little program, and people will pay you millions to be a celebrity; if your startup fails, it was everyone's fault but yours, especially the law's; and if you get fucked over by a business or your employer, you have no one to blame but yourself for not seeing it coming and somehow being sharper than them.  We went through these pie-in-the-sky investment pit shenanigans with Pets.com once before, and now some hoary old veterans want to relive the glory days of 2001, and slapped on a veneer of Gernsbeck futurism to snazz it up.  I fervently hope this little venture of Thiel's falls flat on its ass, and every one of his Golden Ticket holders goes bust in record time, just to put some daylight back into the tech-business world.
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Jackrabbit

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2010, 05:11:46 am »

Christ, he's like a walking, talking straw man of everything bad about this shit.
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Pandarsenic

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2010, 05:12:37 am »

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Give the man a superpower and we're on our way to comic book supervillain status.
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Nikov

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2010, 05:13:53 am »

When you wrote this did you wear the tops of your keyboard keys down to the pistons? Or remember to breathe? You hate a man, big deal.
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Jackrabbit

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2010, 05:16:37 am »

He also gave a variety of valid and genuinely worrying reasons as to why he hates this person, which we are expected to discuss, which would be the point of this thread and would fall neatly into the category of 'General Discussion', which I believe this section is called. I'll go check.

Oh look.
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Nikov

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2010, 05:19:34 am »

So being a "flaming homosexual". Is that one of those things you hate, or just coincidental? Might want to dial down your rhetoric there.
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I should probably have my head checked, because I find myself in complete agreement with Nikov.

Cheeetar

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2010, 05:20:07 am »

I liked Nikov better when all he did was brag about having a wife.
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Aqizzar

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2010, 05:21:22 am »

Thank you Jack, you get a cookie.  I posted this to a forum, instead of a non-existent blog, because I encourage readership and discussion.  Nikov, if you have a problem with, or any comment really, on the man or his philosophy or my assessment of such, don't be afraid to voice it, you are cordially invited.

So being a "flaming homosexual". Is that one of those things you hate, or just coincidental? Might want to dial down your rhetoric there.

Yes, that's very nice.  It's a little thing called a "reference", although I certainly understand that plenty of people have never read The Watchmen.  Y'know, where I got the title from.  There was a movie, it was in all the papers.
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And here is where my beef pops up like a looming awkward boner.
Please amplify your relaxed states.
Quote from: PTTG??
The ancients built these quote pyramids to forever store vast quantities of rage.

Pandarsenic

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2010, 05:21:49 am »

Quote from: Batfuckinsane
I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

I think a post-death society would be good too but I'd like to see it happen for a good reason, not so Peter Thiel can masturbate on the poor.
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YOUR BONE IS THE BEST PANDAR
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Fuck off, you fucking fucker-fuck :I

Jackrabbit

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2010, 05:22:22 am »

Although it's not what Aqizzar was meaning, I think that being a sexist, racist homosexual just seems like such a ridiculous caricature of a human being that it warrants mentioning.
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Nikov

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2010, 05:24:43 am »

Really? Everyone was complaining, I thought. I can go back to that I guess.

Oh, so you can say flaming homosexual if its a reference to a cult hit movie. But I can't say... ah yes, anything, because I'm not... well, you, I suppose.

Well, off to bed to sleep with my beautiful wife!
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Jackrabbit

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2010, 05:27:46 am »

I think it was more a reference to the internationally acclaimed graphic novel comic book. I wasn't aware that the movie had attained cult status.

Incidentally, I think the reason you can't say anything about that is because you're openly homophobic. It's a mental condition apparently? I don't know what excuse you dredged up for that.
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Aqizzar

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2010, 05:30:35 am »

Oh, so you can say flaming homosexual if its a reference to a cult hit movie. But I can't say... ah yes, anything, because I'm not... well, you, I suppose.

I know you really, really want this to be about me, and how something I said reveals me to be an awful person by my own standards.  I highly suggest you stay calm and topical, or I'll have to dredge up some flaggrantly homophobic statements of yours about Dont-Ask-Dont-Tell and quote you entirely in context.  Why don't you just step back, breathe, and then address the topic of the articles instead of a throwaway laugh line.
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And here is where my beef pops up like a looming awkward boner.
Please amplify your relaxed states.
Quote from: PTTG??
The ancients built these quote pyramids to forever store vast quantities of rage.

Eugenitor

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #13 on: October 19, 2010, 05:38:58 am »

Yeah I'm not going to sit here and listen to this bigoted shit either. Peter Thiel might be a throwback to the hyper get-rich-quick, venture-capitalist, dot-com era of the late 90s, but if you have to try to insult him by marking him as a transhumanist, you've gone clear off to the land of "You air-breathers suck, Hitler breathed air", and as a card-carrying transhumanist I'm offended by the comparison. Lock this damn topic and try again.
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Jackrabbit

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Re: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy
« Reply #14 on: October 19, 2010, 05:42:17 am »

Well, what are your beliefs compared to his? I'm not that knowledgeable in Transhumanism. Actually, I know fuck-all about it. Please, explain, I'm really quite interested in it.
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