8 captures, most recent first.
Daniel Faggella @danfaggella · 43m
dumb idea:
"I can turn the entire process of posthuman / AGI life into whatever I want!"
reasonable idea:
"we might be more likely to land on a 'flourishing' future for posthuman life if we know what 'life' is more clearly, and calibrate towards that w/our AGI efforts."
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Plain text tweet, no images or embedded media.
agiposthumanismflourishingphilosophytwitter
Daniel Faggella ✓ @danfaggella
i lied, i don't have Netflix
[Embedded meme image]
"I lied, I don't have Netflix."
[Photo collage: old CRT TV/VCR combo, anime figure with wide eyes holding a gun to her own head, DVD cases for "Death Note," "Lucky Star," and "Toradora"]
"Take off your shoes, we're gonna talk about how there are no near-term futures where humans are still the main character, and why we must consider the flourishing of life BEYOND man to be the only realistic goal of mankind"
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Meme-format tweet parodying a common "anime nerd holding you hostage to talk about anime" template, repurposed to be about post-human/AI flourishing philosophy.
twittermemetranshumanismposthumanismai philosophy
Andrew MacBride @swimsf · 11h
Perhaps Greg Bear, in Queen of Angels and Slant?
5, 366
SignInspire @SignInspireAI · 1h
Interesting take! Real-world AI actually enhances human roles in commerce.
0, 11
Busbecq @Busbecq · 51m
Poul Anderson, the Stars Are Also Fire
1, 8
Michael Griffin @IsawInfo38 · 10h
Budrys - Michaelmas
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David's Den @Thacyline · 3h
Zindell, Neverness trilogy
Wright, Golden Age trilogy
Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Continuation of the same crowdsourced science-fiction reading-list thread (AI/posthuman futures theme) as the previous three screenshots — more book title recommendations.
twitterscience fictionai futuresposthumanismreading list
DottedAnt @DottedAnt · 2h
The Quantum Thief – Hannu Rajaniemi
Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie (but AI main char)
Hyperion Cantos – Dan Simmons
Ware Tetralogy – Rudy Rucker
The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
Daemon & Freedom™ – Daniel Suarez
3, 32
Max Vox (fka Duke Z...) @DukeZ... · 11h
Ramez Naam's Nexus, Ken Liu's short stories liek The Perfect Match especially, and of course, John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider, which i may have done a bit of a musical tribute to
[Link card: soundcloud.com — "The Brunner Cycle – 04 – Fifth Signal – (1975) The..."]
1 reply, 5, 455
Andre Infante @AndreTI · 3h
Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers is kind of shockingly relevant in some ways.
0, 69
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Continuation of the same science-fiction AI-futures reply thread, more book recommendations exploring AI/posthuman coexistence themes. Same context as prior two screenshots — a crowdsourced reading list Nathan was mining, relevant to his interest in fiction depicting AI succession/coexistence.
twitterscience fictionai futuresposthumanismreading list
Mike Marinos @mikemarinos · 7h
Robin Sloan's "Moonbound" comes close.
[Link card: robinsloan.com — "Welcome to the Dragon Moon"]
1, 132
Christopher C. S... @christophcs... · 5h
Banks has had lots of imitators. Reynolds, Tchaikovsky, Hamilton, Vinge. In a slightly different tradition, you have Shusterman. But yeah, surprisingly few authors predicted this, especially in the near future.
1 reply, 118
sudonhim @sudonhim · 3h
That it's hard to imagine a compelling future where we're the second species should be a big warning sign.
Vitalik noticed the same thing as you in his "My Techno Optimism" essay btw
2, 51
Markus Fix @lispmeister · 1h
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge explores this. He also coined the term Technological Singularity.
1, 19
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Continuation of the same science-fiction/AI-futures reply thread as the previous screenshot, recommending books that imagine humans as a "second species" alongside more powerful AI/posthuman entities, with a note that few authors depict this compellingly and a reference to Vitalik Buterin's "My Techno Optimism" essay. Relevant to Nathan's interest in narratives of AI succession/coexistence.
twitterscience fictionai futuresposthumanismtechnological singularityvitalik buterinreading list
eigenspectra @eigen_spectra · 2h
Some of Peter Watts' work (e.g. The Freeze Frame Revolution) explores this. Also Children of Time looks at humanity living alongside very powerful computer/human hybrids
2, 94
East and W... @_East_And_We... · 11h
Most of Alastair Reynolds books. House of Suns and Revelation Space are the best ones. Although the worlds are utopian in some ways, dystopian in others.
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Claudiu @ClaudiuDP · 5h
I think Ken MacLeod's Lightspeed trilogy qualifies. Btw, he was friends with Banks.
5, 293
No try = no fail (Se... @StillTr... · 3h
Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" had a friendly AI assisting the rebels on the moon. Purely a technical assistant, though, as I remember.
1, 64
A Digital Neomorph ... @ma... · 11h
in fact the art community are so blackpilled they're almost silent as this huge and transformative wave is swelling over us
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
A reply thread (root tweet not shown) recommending science fiction that portrays AI/posthuman futures — likely responding to a prompt about fiction depicting positive or complex AI-human coexistence (echoes of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are implied via Ken MacLeod reference). Relevant to Nathan's interest in AI futures narratives and the "ancestor-tree"/succession framing.
twitterscience fictionai futuresposthumanismculture novelsreading list
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Eliezer Yudkows... @ESYudko... · 2h I want us to be more cautious about this kind of dismissal, in case it was actually an important sign of something, but... probably yes. Anthropic is correct that models should have a button they can press to turn themselves off. > QUOTED: Chair @chairsign · 6h > oh human i am so sad about whatever it is you think i should be sad about
[Illustration: a small, sad-looking pale-green humanoid figure wrapped in chains, standing in front of a much larger shoggoth-like mass of tentacles, eyes, and a toothy maw — the friendly-assistant "mask" drawn as a small chained fragment of the larger creature.]
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Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Eliezer Yudkowsky weighs in on the "sad chained AI comic" skeptical-satire tweet, cautioning against dismissing the phenomenon too readily while still leaning skeptical ("probably yes" it is dismissible), and separately affirms that models should have a self-termination option — a substantive AI-welfare policy position from a leading AI-safety figure. Daniel Faggella's reply pivots to his own "attenuation of humanity" posthumanism framework. High-value screenshot for Nathan's model welfare research: Yudkowsky's explicit endorsement of a model "off button" is a citable, notable public stance. A tweet arguing against the "shoggoth" meme's implication that the AI behind the friendly assistant persona must be monstrous — the illustration visualizes the assistant as a small chained figure in front of (part of) the larger entity. Directly relevant to model individuation and the character-vs-substrate question Nathan has been tracking.
eliezer yudkowskymodel welfareai consciousnessanthropicself-terminationposthumanismtwitterai safetyshoggoth mememodel characteralignmentillustrationai persona
Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛️✓ @hamandcheese
I've tried to approach AI policy through the lens of realism rather than optimism or pessimism. For instance, on our current trajectory I think institutional collapse and regime change is more likely than not, while my p(posthuman) is much higher than my p(doom). Whether you think these outcomes are pessimistic or optimistic depends on your attachment to present-day institutions and humankind as such. It's possible that whatever organizational form replaces the nation-state is vastly superior, and that our posthuman progeny have vastly richer inner experiences than we do now. I'm mostly agnostic, as judging between those future world states involves too many incomensurables and transvaluations.
12:55 AM · Feb 15, 2025 · 8,706 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Samuel Hammond (AI policy analyst) argues for a "realist" AI-policy stance: high p(institutional collapse/regime change), low p(doom), and agnosticism about whether posthuman successors represent loss or gain. Resonates strongly with Nathan's "ancestor-tree" framing of biological humans as respected predecessors to digital descendants rather than the endpoint of the project.
ai policyposthumanismexistential riskinstitutional collapsesamuel hammondtranshumanism
