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“To Dissolve Man” An Investigation into the Liquefactionist Party In the 21st century, we will have to deal both with the odious Liquefactionists and with a confused and reactionary anti-Liquefactionism, which is far more apparent and obviously horrifying. I borrow the term “Liquefactionist Party” from William S. Burroughs, who writes about the Liquefactionists in the “Parties of Interzone” section of Naked Lunch - which, as a political policy guide, is unmatched in its insight and accuracy. He writes that, “ The Liquefaction program involves the eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption. ” He goes on: “It will be immediately clear that the Liquefaction Party is, except for one man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final absorption who is whose dupe.” Paradoxically, Burroughs goes on to tell us that “Liquefactionists in general know what the score is.” If they know the score, how can they be dupes? Perhaps thi

Why Capitalism is Ending

January 21, 2019

THE PRODUCTIVITY BOMB Sorry, Ray Kurzweil , there will be no singularity. As much as Moore’s Law has become a cliche, it has also become a cliche to point out that exponential growth has no "knee" - that is to say, that an exponential growth curve has no inflection point. It goes up faster and faster, so that not only is the value rising but the derivative of the value is also rising (that is, the rate of increase is itself increasing) yet at any given point it is still a gradual increase. Growth that gets indefinitely huger as it approaches a specific point of time, a limit known as a singularity, is not exponential growth but rather hyperbolic growth . There’s no evidence that technology is growing hyperbolically; it is “only” growing exponentially. Gordon Moore himself has stated that he doesn't believe in the singularity, or even in the continuation of Moore's Law. (And Moore's Law is starting to fail, anyway ... ) But it hard

Why Ayn Rand was Wrong

June 01, 2023

It is a pet theory of mine that the "greatness" or "importance" of a philosopher is mostly determined by that philosopher's subsequent degree of influence on a government leader. Would we still talk about Socrates, if his student Critias had not taken over Athens as the leader of the Dictatorship of the Thirty? Would we talk about Aristotle, had he not tutored Alexander, who later became Alexander the Great and took over a vast part of the ancient world? Would we remember Rousseau, had not Robespierre declared him "divine"? Or Locke and Montesquieu, had not the founders of the United States revered them? The esteem given to the philosophy by professional professors within the academy matters less, and its internal coherence, or insight, or truth matters less still. By this measure, Ayn Rand is, unfortunately, the most important philosopher of the 20th century. Even though she is barely noticed by philosophy departments, Ayn Rand is massively

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