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Friends,

In Ireland, there’s the legend of the changeling. The baby who is replaced by otherworldly beings with one of their own, leaving the unsuspecting human parents to raise a strange being with bizarre demands; all while it saps their strength, throws their lives into disarray, and never gives them the back the love they offer it.

In our moment, science has been replaced by its changeling: tech culture. It’s a culture that glorifies science, but doesn’t seem to put much stock in it. It makes wild projections not base din any truth or investigation, and then proceeds to build out from them, using the discoveries that sciences has offered.

After writing my previous episode, AEWCH 298, where I laid out my thoughts on how to reflect on A.I. to get to beyond the basic, boring conversation, I read ADAM BECKER‘s excellent book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity .

I immediately invited him on the show, and I wish I would’ve read it before. Even though there is plenty of overlap, Adam’s vantage point offer a full vision of tech culture, and reveals just how deeply anti-science is is.

That impact comes from the fact that Adam is great writer but also an astrophysicist, and author of the excellent popular book on quantum physics, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics.

We talk about how we got here in science and technology, why technology has been conflated with science, how conspiracy and science intersect, and what physics has to do with all of this.

Of course the conclusion is that A.I. is not super smart, not supported by smart people, that the fantasies of tech billionaires are bonkers, and that the singularity is not near because it’s not even a thing.

Adam is one of those guests that it was just so fun to talk with. We had a great time, laughed a lot, amped each other up a bit, and offered the conversation what we genuinely had to offer.

I hope you love it.

CH