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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      It's so strange to see, to get autistic for a moment. Such capacities. We have so much, even a fraction of a percent would send us to the stars. I think everyone knows this. Elon Musk is just a synecdoche for that.

      3 replies 2 retweets 51 likes
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    2. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      You don't need to be woke to see it. It's so obvious. I can't see how it's not completely obvious to people. Maybe that's curse of knowledge, having been on the inside for so long. We need creative people, yes, obviously—it's not something you can order off of Amazon.

      1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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    3. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      I can't see how it's not completely obvious to people that we need more than just the same old same old to get us the last steps there. Honestly. It feels so close. We have all the archives, the documentation, to show us how to get there.

      1 reply 1 retweet 31 likes
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    4. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      It's such a puzzle to me. Could it really be that we are at a point in history where we are so close to fulfilling our promise as a species—and yet, at the same time—so close to self-destruction? I suppose that's been every intellectual's thought since the Bomb.

      3 replies 3 retweets 55 likes
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    5. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      I think there's this fantasy that we can rewind, back to that moment before the First World War; that we can reboot the Empire, build some rockets, and achieve escape velocity from the past. I completely get it, straight up. It's just that it's not true.

      4 replies 1 retweet 23 likes
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    6. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      Simon DeDeo Retweeted Misha Saul

      It's in all of them; most recently, for me, Skidlesky's of Keynes. (The single volume abridged.)https://twitter.com/misha_saul/status/1278178420963213313?s=20 …

      Simon DeDeo added,

      Misha Saul @misha_saul
      Replying to @SimonDeDeo
      Which is the best biography of the scene you've read?
      2 replies 1 retweet 18 likes
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    7. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      Despite my ridiculous accent, and my let's say physiognomy, I felt, as a kid back in the 1990s, part of the British Empire. The idea was that all of this obvious racism was just a side-show, it would wash out, all (& we) would be forgiven.

      2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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    8. Simon DeDeo‏ @SimonDeDeo Jun 30
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      But I think what cracked me was the Harlem Renaissance and jazz. Reading Baldwin; listening to Charlie Parker. I suppose it's the Dream deferred. It's almost like a theological fact. You can't get to Mars until you reckon with the sin. Can't quantify that, obviously.

      5 replies 2 retweets 45 likes
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    9. Brian Skinner‏ @gravity_levity Jun 30
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      Replying to @SimonDeDeo

      When I was in college I was close to the poet-professor Nikki Giovanni, who wrote a poem called "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars)". The thesis was that the only way we'll be ready for a journey to Mars was if we first reckon with Middle Passage.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
    10. Brian Skinner‏ @gravity_levity Jun 30
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      Replying to @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

      Hearing her explain it at the time, I thought it sounded crazy. I didn't get it. It's such a bizarre experience hearing nearly the exact same argument come from you 16 years later. And bizarre that I (almost) understand it now. Makes me feel like I owe her an apology.

      2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      Replying to @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

      Hmm this seems factually wrong to me. It’s a fine poetic-religious sentiment to imagine some karmic balance between moral development and technological progress, but it doesn’t seem to be backed up by history.

      9:54 PM - 30 Jun 2020
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      • Yvonne Marie Diesel Johnson Salvitti Malcolm S Adele Dewey-Lopez Ricky Mohammed Adam desultory thought reader Rahul Ramchandani MKULTRA_MONKEY .so krispy.
      5 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        2. Brian Skinner‏ @gravity_levity Jun 30
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          Replying to @vgr @SimonDeDeo

          I think (part of) her thesis in that poem specifically is that embedded within African-American culture is a kind of technology for dealing with fear, isolation, feeling inhuman, + other things. And you can't hope to get to mars without understanding and embracing that technology

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Replying to @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

          I’d buy an economic argument perhaps, that an unjust society cannot produce the magnitude of per capita surpluses required to sustain programs past a point. But cultural essentialist arguments about lack of specific bits of moral progress holding back specific technologies, no.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        1. .so krispy.‏ @_sokrispy_ Jun 30
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          Replying to @vgr @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

          I agree Venkat: it can’t be a universal principle (that a civilization can’t succeed until it fixes its moral failures). Maybe Simon and Giovanni’s argument is that *our civilization,* right now, is doomed unless we rectify ourselves.

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        1. Adnane Osmane‏ @Adnane_Osmane Jul 1
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          Replying to @vgr @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

          Not sure that's what he is saying, I understood it as arguing that the scale & nature of our current moral shortcomings are preventing us from progressing. And no one in history has been able to obliterate another people sitting at the other end of the globe. Uncharted territory.

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        2. baby yoneda‏ @BabyYoneda Jul 1
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          Replying to @vgr @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

          Read the poem, that’s not the point of it all. I understood it as two descriptions of an alien encounter - we either show up to Mars under the same dehumanizing expansionist logic of new world colonization, or with the humility and humanity of the Middle Passage experience

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. baby yoneda‏ @BabyYoneda Jul 1
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          Replying to @BabyYoneda @vgr and

          The former wouldn’t constitute much progress. The latter is probably one of the most sci-fi experiences humans have already had in history, and there’s something for us to learn from it.

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        4. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. Ricky‏ @rickyofmontay Jul 1
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          Replying to @vgr @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo

          It’s not backed up by history or rational understanding. Werner Von Braun and Operation Paperclip got the USA into space. “It’s all so obvious to me? How can’t people see it??” rhetoric reminds me of an ex girlfriend who couldn’t understand why I didn’t see god in all things.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Ricky‏ @rickyofmontay Jul 1
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          Replying to @rickyofmontay @vgr and

          Humanists love to try and attach their moral hobby horses to technological advance. It’s both a means of claiming ownership over scientific accomplishment and an implicit threat- that you don’t deserve to advance until you fulfill our demands.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation

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