Tech Bro Utopianism

Tech Bros think that democracy is not only an impediment to themselves and their interests, but an impediment to society's interests.

Tech Bro Utopianism is a particular ideology that pulls together the beliefs of technologically enhancing the human body, bioengineering, development of AI, belief in the 'great man' theory of development, a specific and uninformed worship of what they call 'rationalism' and that democracy in general, and in particular democratic liberalism as we've had for centuries now, get in the way of progress.

We had a presentation about this recently. Here are some sources and further reading on the topic.

Billionaires

Many tech billionaires to a greater or lesser degree seem to be oriented by the tech bro view of tech utopia:

• Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, shadow president of the USA) seems to be motivated by a lot of TESCREAL, including Roko's Basilisk.

• Sam Altman (OpenAI/ChatGPT) by AI

• Peter Thiel (PayPal) libertarian, bankrolled far-right politics including JD Vance (Trump's VP). Wants to break government and deregulate:

  Believes that "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."

  (Source: The Education of a Libertarian essay by Peter Thiel)

• Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX fraud) Ethical Altruism

• Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) VR/Metaverse

• Jeff Bezos (Amazon) space habitats

• Sergey Brin & Larry Ellison (Google) by life extension

• Jeffrey Epstein (finance) by eugenics

Sources & Further Reading

• The 'dangerous' promise of a techno-utopian future by Naheed Mustafa (CBC Ideas). The article includes a companion CBC Ideas podcast, allowing you to listen to either or both.

Videos

• How Reasonable Philosophies Led to FTX's Crypto Scam Collapsing by Rebecca Watson. Covers attempts to be rational and to streamline ethical choices. Transcript.

• The Connection Conspiracy Behind Jeffrey Epstein - Chatper 3, 18:40 minutes in Epstien connection

• Roko's Basilisk: The apocalypse as imagined by bozos by Thought Slime. This comedic video looks at the tech bro mentality around 'rationalism', 'ethics' and vision for the future.

• The Rich Have Their Own Ethics: Effective Altruism & the Crypto Crash (ft. F1nn5ter) by Philosophy Tube.

• Transhumanism: "The World's Most Dangerous Idea" by Philosophy Tube. When our meeting spiraled in to conflict when someone expressed conspiricism, I quickly played this video starting from the begining (until the opening title) and jumped forward to Part 11 at 23 minutes for the next 4 minutes.

• TikTok video of Comedian Gabby Bryan hearing from an audience member who was in the ethical alturism culture which was covered in the article "Comedian meets woman from a cult at her show and everyone is saying the same thing " on Indy100

• The Alt-Right Playbook: Always a Bigger Fish

  • Conservative going in depth in Endnote 3: The Origins of Conservatism video.

Articles

• Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real by sci-fi author Charles Stross in Scientific American. Some quotes:

  Billionaires who grew up reading science-fiction classics published 30 to 50 years ago are affecting our life today in almost too many ways to list: Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. Jeff Bezos prefers 1970s plans for giant orbital habitats.  Peter Thiel is funding research into artificial intelligence, life extension and “seasteading.” Mark Zuckerberg has blown $10 billion trying to create the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. And Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has published a “techno-optimist manifesto” promoting a bizarre accelerationist philosophy that calls for an unregulated, solely capitalist future of pure technological chaos.

  ...

  SF is a profoundly ideological genre—it’s about much more than new gadgets or inventions. Canadian science-fiction novelist and futurist Karl Schroeder has told me that “every technology comes with an implied political agenda.” And the tech plutocracy seems intent on imposing its agenda on our planet’s eight billion inhabitants.

  ...

  Science fiction, therefore, does not develop in accordance with the scientific method. It develops by popular entertainers trying to attract a bigger audience by pandering to them. The audience today includes billionaires who read science fiction in their childhood and who appear unaware of the ideological underpinnings of their youthful entertainment: elitism, “scientific” racism, eugenics, fascism and a blithe belief today in technology as the solution to societal problems.

• Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.' By Julia Black, Nov 17, 2022. Even briefly mentions other less far gone tech leaders:

  In the 2010s, the longevity craze swept Silicon Valley and industry titans like Jeff Bezos, 58, Sergey Brin, 49, and Larry Ellison, 78, poured billions of dollars into biotech companies they thought could help them defy death. Jeffrey Epstein reached out to scientists about freezing his head and penis to be revitalized hundreds of years later, while Peter Thiel, 55, was said to have sought blood transfusions from the young. (In response to the rumor, Thiel stated: "On the record, I am not a vampire.")

• What “longtermism” gets wrong about climate change By Émile P. Torres, November 22, 2022

• The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence Timnit Gebru and Emile P. Torres. A surface level philosophical exploration by the coiners of the term.

  Rationalism. In the late 2000s, yet another community arose: the Rationalists. This centered around the community blogging website LessWrong, founded in 2009 by Yudkowsky, which describes itself as “an online forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning and decision-making.” One of its primary aims is rationality “training,” and its website notes that “many members ... are heavily motivated by trying to improve the world as much as possible.” This, it explains, is one reason many Rationalists became “convinced many years ago that AI was a very big deal for the future of humanity,” and consequently “the LessWrong team ... are predominantly motivated by trying to cause powerful AI outcomes to be good”. While Extropianism and singularitarianism are variants of transhumanism, there is no necessary connection between Rationalism and transhumanism. However, many Rationalists are transhumanists or sympathetic with the transhumanist worldview, and one of the most popular topics discussed on the LessWrong website has been the Singularity in the second sense above: the possibility of an intelligence explosion.

  ...

  Cosmism. A vision of the future that anticipates humans and machines merging, the development of “sentient AI” and mind uploading, space colonization, and “scientific ‘future magic’ much beyond our current understanding and imagination” (Goertzel, 2010).

Basic Wikipedia Entries

• Technological_utopianism from Wikipedia. Linked to the 19th/20th century section. This is an interesting long view on the various forms of Techno Utopianism.
• Transhumanism from Wikipedia.
• Extropianism from Wikipedia.
• Singularitarianism from Wikipedia.
• Effective altruism from Wikipedia.
• Longtermism from Wikipedia.

Historical perspectives

When I was reading the above Scientific American article, it reminded me I hadn't read the sci-fi authors mentioned, include the article's author. When I went to my wish list, I found some books that seem relevant. I haven't read these books:

• Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race by Mary-Jane Rubenstein in book, ebook and audiobook

• Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris in book, ebook and audiobook.

  I read about this book in an interview with the author from 2 years ago: Greed, eugenics and giant gambles: author Malcolm Harris on the deadly toll of Silicon Valley capitalism Lois Beckett, The Guardian, Thu 11 May 2023.

  I'm curious how much it will repeat or expand upon my understand of early start up, hacker and tech culture I know from my early online days and the following books. Neither are critical of the ideologies involved which Palo Alto would likely delve in to.

  • Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

I've been recommended seemingly related are books like Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis. But it seems indirectly relevant.

Recently The Gaurdian published an article titled ‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley by Becca Lewis, Wed 29 Jan 2025. It talks about the reactionary social opinions that have been pervasive in the top of the tech industry.

An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a