Actually, I like 2023
A Very Dark Optimist's outlook.
The last handful of years, it seemed as though the world would inevitably get worse and crazier every year. The internet kept getting crazier, people kept getting internetier, authorities of all kinds got emperor has no clothesier, and then there was a pandemic.
But I feel like in my personal reactions to all this I’ve turned a corner, and I’m starting to like the madness. In the year 2023, I can type almost any phrase into an image generator, and get a cool image that not only sorta kinda looks like what I said, but also has all these bizarre bonus glitches. Fingers and faces are more odd than I could have made them if I tried, and words turn into a weird alien language. We should really appreciate this stage of development. AI grow up so fast.
I could ask Chatgpt to write this post for me and it would, in three seconds, write something that would be boring, but it would be a post you could imagine a boring, cliche person writing. We’re so proud of you Sydney.
Yes, our government is daring Russia to nuke things. No there is no point, we are not going to get anything out of it, but at least we have a more immediate problem to focus on other than our looming demise at the hands of our adorable little robots. It may seem like the smart people are being melodramatic when warning us that all humans will be killed by AI, but the public focus on extinction is a distraction from the real problem, which is that AI will figure out how keep us alive indefinitely, only so it can torture us infinitely.
Viewed in this light, 2023 is so, so great. Ask yourself, Which drama would you prefer play out in society over the next year?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inspires a large minority of Democrats. When his own party aggressively tries to tamp down on him, they overshoot it. It blows up in their face and a large fraction of former democratic voters follow him to a third party, where they find a bunch of Republicans have decided to try a less insane candidate for a change. Neither Democrats or Republicans are competitive in 2024. Both blame Elon Musk. An internal memo leaks from the CIA saying simply “No, it would be too obvious.”
Everyone is infinitely tortured.
Enjoy!