Old Scams in Sci-Fi Clothing

An increasing number of people believe that the things they read and see in science fiction will soon be real, if they are not already. 28% of USA 18-34 year olds believe humans will land on Mars in their lifetimes. Endless memes tell us how the Star Trek communicator predicted the cellphone, though it seems likely the opposite was true. On the pathetic – and dangerous – side we have a public figure declaring that wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers, a sci-fi trope if ever there was one.

As a sci-fi writer I have neither intent nor interest in predicting the future. I’m in Ursula K. Le Guin’s camp, when she said “Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive” – sci-fi in its best forms tells us something about the world today, not about what the world could be a 100, or a 1,000 years hence. The science in science fiction is there to engage the reader, and help suspend disbelief over faster-than-light travel, radical bio-engineering, or sentient AIs – the impossible marvels that enable sci-fi plots. Good sci-fi deploys a narrative of science in support of an entertaining and interesting story – great sci-fi uses that science narrative, like Shakespeare said, as a mirror held up to nature, that let’s us see ourselves in a new light.

Still, if this was just about readers with over-optimistic hopes for the future, I would hardly be concerned. Optimism is a good thing, right? But as a recent book describes, this projection of sci-fi impossibilities into the near future is a scam that many of the most wealthy people on Earth are riding to ever greater riches and power.

That book is More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. The book’s author, Adam Becker, has a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Michigan. His 2018 book, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, is a discussion of the disconnect between the everyday world of Newtonian physics we all understand, and the bizarre concepts of quantum theory – suffice to say Becker knows his share of actual science.

M-E-F is a hard book to describe. It takes as jumping-off points three major frontiers in science, technology and society: Artificial Intelligence, Extended Life and Immortality, and the Colonization of Space. Becker looks at these “big ideas” from two sides. First is that of the bombastic “visionaries” and billionaires, and their outlandish predictions, like:

“2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created …Ultimately, it will affect everything, We’re going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans.” Ray Kurzweil

“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.” Jeff Bezos

“The true battle is: Extinctionists who want a holocaust for all of humanity. — Versus — Expansionists who want to reach the stars and Understand the Universe.” Elon Musk

Ok, pretty out there statements, but isn’t articulating pie-in-the-sky BHAGs what innovators do? Becker looks deeper into the world of these latter-day Nostradamii and finds important context, like in Effective Altruism. Hmm, earning more in order to give more, sounds great, almost virtuous, right? Of course the most famous – and notorious – exponent of EA was Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX crypto exchange and multi-billion-dollar swindler. Yes, Bankman-Fried and FTX did donate some millions of dollars to actual charities, like $3.7 million to Deworm the World. But his bigger play was in organizations like the FTX Future Fund. This group advocated longtermism, the notion that philanthropy should be evaluated based on effects over very long periods of time. Again seems common-sense, but advocates for this pose cases like so:

• What if a 1,000 years from now humanity goes extinct?
• And what if I invest my $10 million right now in something that, over time, will prevent that?
• Isn’t the benefit of my $10 million therefore infinite, since avoiding extinction allows all of humanity, in uncounted future billions, to continue to live?

What is going on here is that longtermism is glib rationalization that allows Silicon Valley types to invest in whatever they want, and say it is helping humanity in the future. It’s just a scam.

Scams on science are as old as, well, science. Perpetual motion scams flourished in the 19th century, while modern versions offer things like cars running on water that splits itself into hydrogen and oxygen, burns those to create power, then captures the resulting water to keep the perpetual cycle going. And there’s Elizabeth Holmes, who obtained millions in funding for a magic but non-existent blood testing device.

These scams work because people want to believe. For an example, look at the 1-star reviews of A City on Mars, an objective analysis of how feasible it is for Humanity to live on that planet. Spoiler: it ain’t feasible at all, some of the reasons being: the radiation will be quickly fatal; there’s no water; and perchlorates in the soil would poison you and make agriculture impossible. Yet negative reviewers say things like this:

History shows that humans constantly solve problems and create new tools. Judging space exploration based only on what we can do today ignores the fact that science and technology are always moving forward. What seems impossible now might be normal in the future.

Newsflash: There’s never going to be a Star Trek personal force field that blocks radiation – either you need to go about sheathed in lead, or live 100 meters underground.

Alright, this post is getting long. One last thing: The billionaire Illuminati are doing more than just give interviews. Paul Waldman of Public Notice recently brought all this into current focus in a post entitled “Big tech is coming for the midterms”. What do we learn here? Some excepts:

…venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and other leading lights in the Valley, said it raised $125 million in the second half of 2025 in preparation for the midterms. Meta created a network of super PACs aimed at influencing federal and state elections; they say they plan to spend $65 million this year. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, Elon Musk has already spent $71 million ahead of the midterms in donations to super PACs and Republican groups.

…  Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted that within five years, AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white collar jobs and produce economy-wide unemployment over 20 percent. Mustafa Suleyman, who runs Microsoft’s AI efforts, said in February that within 12-18 months, everyone who works on a computer could have their job automated.

No one knows how accurate these predictions will turn out to be, but for the sake of argument let’s accept that at some point in the future, AI will drive millions of people out of work, and they will be unable to quickly find jobs at similar wages. What happens then?

The answer some tech leaders give is that there’s no need to worry, because AI will create a utopia of limitless wealth.

“There will be universal high income (not merely basic income),” says Elon Musk. “Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.”

Andreessen predicts basically the same thing: “A world in which human wages crash from AI — logically, necessarily — is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero. Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.”

Sound familiar? These are the promises of science fiction, where energy is free and replicators instantly make everything we need. But these predictions don’t come from doe-eyed optimism – they are calculated pitches intended to convince all of us that if only we get rid of those pesky regulations, if only we stop worrying about unemployment, then billionaires like Musk will give us this idyllic future. All we need to do is elect their candidates into positions of power.

All I can say is this: Enjoy your SF, but don’t let these singulitarian robber barons, well, rob us.

Till next time …