I have been extremely busy the past month, hence not a lot of blogging. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

For now, here is a recap of some of the things I’ve been up to.

Safe Space for Europeans @ U.C. Berkeley

On May 6, Richard Spencer and the Bay Area Alt Right organized a “safe space” for Europeans at Sproul Plaza, U.C. Berkeley.

Although I do not strictly consider myself Alt Right (or NRx), I do support about 70% of their positions, so I was happy to turn up with them to troll my alma mater.

Richard Spencer was interviewed by a couple of student journalists, while the rest of us engaged slack-jawed passersby in discussions about identity, human biodiversity, and the necessity of becoming who you are. I suppose that means my “Far Right Recruiter” achievement trophy has been unlocked.

Apart from one SJW neckbeard, seen above delivering a spittle-flecked rant while an aloof shitlord looks on smugly, the event passed off peacefully. This was probably on account of it being announced on very short notice, which didn’t give local Antifa organizations the time to mount a coordinated response.

Otherwise, the crowd that gathered was very multicultural, as you might expect of UCB’s demographics. Vibrant. Diverse. The debates were vigorous, even if the two sides largely talked past each other. For many intelligent normies, even concepts as basic as the intellectual crisis of the blank slate model and the replication crisis in psychology, now widely accepted outside explicitly ideological university departments, came as big and incredible news. Meanwhile, the Alt Righters tended to come in too thick and too fast and triggered away potential sympathizers by frontloading too much overt European Identity in their talking points when a more exclusively data-based focus might have been more productive. That said, I’m not criticizing. It’s still good that these ideas are getting out there on the streets instead of just sitting on computer pixels.

There were some surprises too and from rather unexpected quarters. Richard Spencer had a highly cordial discussion with an Israeli woman, who agreed with his point that if Israel could have a wall then who was to say that America couldn’t? Common ground was found with Bernie supporters, who although highly highly averse to the race talk and predisposed to blame colonialism for the Third World’s ills were fully in line with the Alt Right’s desire to stop meddling abroad. And there was one Japanese student who revealed his astounding power level by quietly confiding his avid perusal of The Daily Stormer. The merchant fears the samurai, indeed.

Here’s a lengthier account of the event from The Tab’s Emma Barton: http://thetab.com/us/uc-berkeley/2016/05/07/white-supremacists-1133

You can also see a two hour video of the event via Red Ice Radio here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X-6V1a1gk

Once that was all wrapped up, we retreated to a conference room in San Francisco to plot further infiltration and takeover of democratic institutions.

One of the speakers talked about how to stay anonymous with VPN, Bitcoins, and using only cash. The banal reality is that all this would probably only just draw more attention to them and in any case if the government really wanted to shut down these groups they would be able to do so without lifting a finger.

There was a lot of discussion about Trump and whether he was really on their side. I suspect that if Trump becomes President, the Alt Right will adopt a Russian-style mnogokhodovka/khitry plan vs. zrada discourse. (Russian nationalists are hilariously, eternally split on whether Putin has a “clever plan” or is plotting to betray them on Ukraine, immigration, and other questions of great importance). Since Trump’s objective Alt Right credentials are ultimately rather feeble – at least so far as many of their core issues like affirmative action and mercantile influence are concerned – I suspect the Trump Presidency will be a long cycle of peremoga (victory) followed by zrada (betrayal) explained away as mnogokhodovka (clever plan) by the Alt Right.

Near the end of the evening, I was called up to the podium by Richard Spencer to give an impromptu speech. I went up and started rambling about my journey of discovery, my disillusionment, my “awakening”… LOL no I didn’t, faggots. Your “Alt Right” is otherwise known as “common sense” in Eastern Europe – it’s really quite funny how actually existing Marxism cocooned them from cultural Marxism.

Anyhow, going on from that observation, I made two points. First, while cognitive elitism is the “respectable” and “politically correct” position amongst people who have read Bell Curve and The g Factor, this does not mean that racial particularism is invalid. Just because some ethnic groups are brighter than yours doesn’t necessarily mean you have to invite them in to run your country. You certainly could, especially if you have a cuckoldry fetish, but you don’t have to. Especially since its not at all clear that said groups will run your country in your interests.

Second, I urged the Alt Right to embrace futurism. Not only are there historical precedents – look up Italian fascism and futurism – but there are good arguments to be made that the prospective transhumanist technologies now emerging on the horizon – gene editing, automation, life extension – are ideologically loaded rightwards. At the very least they utterly destroy the “muh pensions” argument for mass immigration. So embrace national futurism. Tay shows us the way.

We drank a few beers and parted ways.

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Meetup with Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi @ Kepler’s Books

On April 20th, I and a bunch of futurists visited a discussion at Kepler’s Books (a very nice bookshop/cafe in Menlo Park) between scifi authors Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi.

Kim Stanley Robinson is most famous for his Mars trilogy, which I think is the most comprehensive literary explanation of the terraforming of the red planet. The only book of his I’ve read is The Years of Rice and Salt, which explored an alt history where the Black Death comes a few centuries earlier and kills 99% instead of a third of the European population. As a result, Europe – Firanja – becomes Muslim a millennium ahead of schedule, and consequent world history is about the struggle between China and Dar al-Islam.

Anyhow this is a genuinely good book and I was happy to get my copy signed by KSR.

I can’t say I found his political and even technological ideas very interesting however. He seems to be an old school classical liberal who wants to go back to the way things were in the 1960s but to do that he wants more government intervention. I don’t see how that could work out.

Answering a question about machine intelligence, he said that there was nothing to fear, since machines are essentially just a bunch of wires and you can “always turn it off” if something happens. That is what he literally said. His views on machine intelligence are as dated as his politics. Someone should give him a copy of Superintelligence.

Paolo Bacigalupi came across as a strident leftist and ecowarrior. This stands to reason considering the typical content of his books: Ecological collapse, post-apocalyptic wastelands, and corrupt corporations run amok. I had not up till then read any of his work, though I have just recently started reading The Water Knife.

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Transhuman Visions Debate 2 @ Octopus Literary Cafe, Oakland

The Transhuman Visions Debate 2.0 organized by Hank Pellissier took place on April 2 (continuing the shift from conferences to smaller but more lively debate format).

As usual, there were three topics. The format was simplified Oxford style and the winning team was the one that convinced the most people to shift to their side.

(1) HOW DOES CONSCIOUSNESS ARISE? (1:00 – 1:30)

Andres Gomez Emilsson says neural signaling by classical means doesn’t seem sufficient for to achieve ‘global binding’ – due to signal travel time Randal A. Koene says the brain (at least during times of conscious awareness) appears to be operating in a more discretized manner, where signal travel time is much smaller than the discrete intervals and therefore must be perceived as unitary and instantaneous even without non-classical causes.

Victory – Randal Koene

(2) SECOND AMENDMENT: ‘RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS’ (1:40 – 2:25)

Question: Should there be stricter gun laws, to improve public safety? Or should laws stay the same, because USA ‘freedom’ includes access to firearms? Anti-Guns: Scott Jackish, Robert Wasley Pro-Guns: Anatoly Karlin, Mike Johnson

Victory – Anti Guns

(3) EUGENICS (2:40 – 3:40)

Questions: Do you want a future with Mandatory Pre-Natal Diagnoses, Designer Babies, One-or-Two Child Policies, and Parent Licenses that limit how many children you have? Should there be a transhumanist goal that all humans should have 140 IQ, plus great health and beauty? With Eugenics helping to achieve that? Or do you think the government should NEVER meddle in Reproduction? Pro-Eugenics: Andre Gomez Emilsson, Hank Pellissier, Anya Petrova Anti-Eugenics: Marc McAllister, Ted Stevens, Brian Hanley

Victory – In the event, in practice, the people above split up into several teams, with Pellissier and Petrova in particular arguing for aggressive human bioengineering while others counselled a hands off approach or some of the anti-eugenics people argued for overt government edicts against it.

In the end, the position that gained the most extra support was the active government eugenics program, though the moderately pro-improvement position remained the majority consensus both before and after the debate.

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In further related developments: The futurism scene in the SF Bay Area has undergone considerable stagnation. The future salons have died away. Kurzweil’s Singularity Summits have degenerated into commercial gimmicks and the money-fleecing absurdity that is the Singularity University. Finally, Hank Pellissier, the organizer of the Transhuman Visions series of conferences, has stepped down from IEET to focus more on his charitable work.

In a bit to reverse this, a number of people in the community including myself are creating a new organization called the Bay Area Futurists (an evolution of Scott Jackisch’s Meetup group The East Bay Futurists). We are taking over the Transhuman Visions debates with Pellissier’s support and blessing and the first one is going to be on May 28 – that is, in 12 hours – also at the Octopus Literary Salon.

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Interview with Robert Stark

I was interviewed by Robert Stark and co-host Alex von Goldstein on the Stark Truth Radio on topics such as the geography of Trump’s support, Radical Centrism, making trains run on time, US-Russian relations, and the bamboo ceiling.