Gen X – The most dangerous survival mind ever built

As a 1970 Gen X, I can say that the video below is mostly right about my generation.

Mostly.

At least about the kids like myself that grew up in dysfunctional blue collar, worker class families.

Iron Maiden wrote a song about what life in our youth felt like.

That song is called WRATHCHILD and the first verse goes like this:

I was born into a scene of angriness and greed

And dominance and persecution

My mother was a queen, my dad I’ve never seen

I was never meant to be

We had to raise ourselves because nobody was ever there for us.

For over half a century, we’ve been fighting uphill battles and got shit done while everything around us was constantly falling apart.

Wherever we were, we kept the boat from sinking.

But for what?

Pension and retirement have always been a lie.

It’s always been just an additional tax that we had to pay.

Now we’re tired of it all.

Done.

But here comes the part where the video is dead wrong:

No, we don’t need – or want – connection unless it’s with a dog or any other animal.

What we we really need is a way to check out of the rat race and escape the increasing insanity of our failed society.

We just want to live in peace and as far away from other people as possible.

Digital Immortality

In 1959, Robert Sheckley published an interesting novel called “Immortality, Inc”. It was adapted into a movie called “Freejack” in 1992.

At the core of this novel is a technology that allows humans to fully digitize their brains so that their minds can become immortal. The process of the scan is done while the human is fully conscious, so they can confirm whether the scan is correct. This transfer is done layer by layer, effectively destroying the original organic brain.

There is a startup called Nectome that is working on making this technology a reality, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has already signed up for having his entire brain scanned and digitized as soon as that technology becomes available. 

Just as in the novel, digital immortality is in reach for those who can afford it.

Now just think about this for a second:

Maybe that’s the real reason why they’re throwing so much money at those AI data centers.

Maybe it’s not really about large language models, maybe it’s about having enough capacity to host the digitized minds of the financial aristocracy.