I think the connection isn't with belief in the supernatural, but with the specific belief that there are things around us that look like people but aren't people. I can easily see how the latter at minimum makes one very susceptible for racism.

If people start believing that androids are a real thing (not the OS, human like robots), it's only a matter of time before people will be accused of being androids.

Oh yes, very much so.

The British Empire had its colonial administrators curriculum consisting of Latin and history and such. A rich 19th century heir that went into physics or mathematics were considered to be wasting the chance of a political career.

It made their colonial administrators write about their crimes in a nice prose, but it didn't stop the genocides. If anything it made them aware of what paper trails to burn after the fact, in order to obfuscate the crimes when future historians came looking.

I meant to put something in there about the similarities and differences with planned economies, but I kinda lost track of that.

Anyway, the profit driven capital allocation in theory allocates capital to production of goods people want - and thus presumably need. The hype driven capital allocation does no such thing.

In contrast with a planned economy, the real goals of the hype driven capital allocation are hidden by corporate secrecy and if presented would probably just be to collect tonnes of money for the richest people. In a planned economy at least there are goals like more toilet paper production, if people need more toilet paper.

In short the hype driven capital allocation is worse than planned economy.

I can't get over that the two axis are:

Time to the next event.

Time before present.

And then they have plotted a bunch of things happening with less time between. I can't even.

Yeah, his name comes up in the Folding Ideas video. Don't remember his name though, but if I remember correctly, he was a stock trainer who realised that large investors had large bets on game stop stock going down, and if it instead went up there was a lot of money to be made by betting on it going up. So he made such bets, spread the word, stock went up, he got rich and exited stage left without getting prosecuted for market manipulation.

But by then the whole memestock thing was of to the races.

Even if you got one, depositing it would raise some questions.

Philanthropy can't change the power structures, philanthropy is a band aid that soothe the conscience of the philanthropist.

Aaron and assorted developers can't give the villagers power, because they only have power in relation to the villagers, not in relation to the world trade system. If they want to give the villagers power they need to change the system that gives the villagers a fraction of their earnings per hour.

But then you are back to the usual options. Thirty years of boredom, trying to change the system from within? Protest world leaders and get beaten by police for your troubles (or even sentenced for destruction of police equipment by smashing your face into it)? Join a communist party and play spot the fed?

I guess it's better to join a philanthropy cult, where billionaires can pay you to hang out in a castle and discuss the problems with the poor over some overpriced ethanol.

And did it appear he needed any help from dorky software engineers personally going to villages to “help out”?

I once saw what I think was a BBC show where an Englishman visited cool tribes and lived with them. Tough, outdoorsman.

The only episode I saw he was in Mongolia and it had what I think was unintentional humour. The local vet - who had been the local party representative during the Communist era and now held some other title - placed him in a family that could need a hand during migration, as their teenage daughter had a disability. So on he went on horseback and he made it there with just a bunch more pauses then the Mongolians would have preferred. But once there, the best his hosts could say about his efforts to help was "Well, he is strong. And he is trying."

By the looks of it, the Mongolians could not believe how a big, strong guy could be so utterly useless.

Soviets were in theory democratic councils but were in practice ruled top-down (except in the very beginning, according to Emma Goldman in her book "My two years in Russia"). So I don't think there is much similarity there.

On the other hand, charter cities are according to Wikipedia essentially areas where a more advanced economy "helps" a third world country by "temporarily" taking over governance to develope the area. In other words: a colony.

And in the historical part of their video I missed the other parts of the industrial revolution. You know the taking over other countries to get cheap raw materials, cheap labour and captive markets. Surely just an oversight that they forgot to mention how colonialism has worked before and its role in why poor countries are poor.

Isn't "pandemic preparation" one of their longtermist causes that they grift money to? Shouldn't they have been able to show some results?

Oxford educating the creme de la creme of the murderous British empire for centuries got to have given them expertise in rationalisations. Before the genocides and the pillage can really get going you need an officer class who can order murder for the greater good without stopping to ask "Hans, are we the baddies?"