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Supposedly, the unencumbered advance of AI has already reduced the artistic process to a mindless A to B task, like assembling an IKEA KALLAX unit or dumping bleach down a clogged drain, thus exterminating all pleasure of creative self-expression from our lives. And yet, every week I stumble across at least one combination of words that, for better or worse, has never been put together before. The latest dispatch from VICE’s roving reporter Nick Dove contains at least half a dozen sentences that anyone with a well calibrated nervous system would need to read thrice in order to comprehend. For instance: “Ronny Fernandez, Lighthaven’s former manager, and Aella, the sex-positive writer and escort famous for her erotic trendcasting and 2024 birthday gangbang, organized the Torture Potluck together.”
The context only adds another entry to the hall of deranged word combinations: Nick went to a party in Berkeley hosted by the Bay Area Rationalist community, who gathered in a liminal-looking astroturfed garden to debate “x-risk” (existential risk), drink Everclear, and waterboard each other for fun. For those wondering what the Bay Area Rationalist community is, Nick describes it as:
“An influential intellectual movement whose beliefs are loosely defined, but whose founding principles advocated reducing cognitive biases and meticulously applying reason to the human experience. The subculture originated with sites such as Eliezer Yudkowsky’s LessWrong and Scott Alexander’s Slate Star Codex, and though once niche, it has in recent years emerged at the forefront of the debates—and controversies—surrounding artificial intelligence.”
Discussing the potentials of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, they have mapped several potential outcomes, one of which Nick outlines here:
“One scenario, the group’s preferred ‘Plan A’, results in AGI being achieved by 2040, a negotiated treaty between the U.S. and China having regulated the pace of development, before humanity relinquishes its role as Earth’s apex intelligence. In that time, the plan says, we find a way to generate so much wealth that we’re each receiving million dollar per person universal basic incomes within the decade, suggesting the borderline unbelievable: that fully-automated luxury space capitalism is within reach, a functional utopia without class struggle, just endless parabolic growth.”
Feed the lizard in your brain by reading Nick’s full report below:
I Went to a ‘Torture Party’ With Polyamorous Bay Area Rationalists
On the more visceral side of the mind-expansion coin, grim news hit European festival season recently when Ozora, a week-long psytrance festival in Hungary, was cut short following two attendee deaths and several other life-threatening incidents. The most discussed was a fatal fall from the roof of the festival’s main stage, which happened in the middle of a DJ set in front of the entire crowd. On top of that, a German guy in his twenties fell from a tree he’d climbed and ended up in hospital, two festival-goers were arrested in connection with a stabbing on-site, and a woman suffered a fatal cardiac arrest.
While basically no festival unfolds without incident, this is not the first time that deaths have been reported at Ozora, which has been running since 2004, and takes place in a country with less permissive drug policies than other European nations that regularly host “transformational festivals,” as they’re known. Now, the volume and severity of the incidents has prompted debate over whether more could be done to keep the crowd safe and signpost harm reduction, or whether this type of risk is part and parcel of an event that ravers go to specifically to take enormous quantities of psychedelics. Speaking to attendees, organizers, and the guy who fell out of the tree, VICE’s Mattha Busby reports:
“The fatal fall came after 18 hours of ceaseless psytrance on the main stage. Following this was a scheduled ‘time out,’ which lasted longer than planned. An announcer appeared to inform the crowd that a coroner was en route, the first official indication that the man had died. Thousands turned on their heels to head to another stage with little fanfare. A Hungarian witness in his fifties, who also did not want to be named, told me at the time: ‘Some crazy people fuck up thousands of people’s party.’”
Read Mattha’s full dispatch on the events at Ozora below:
Why Do People Keep Dying at This Week-Long Psytrance Festival?
Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine
To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)
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