Join PALLADIUM Magazine in San Francisco on Friday, September 4 to hear a lecture by James Poulos, author of "The Dostoevskian Moment." The article will be featured in our upcoming print edition, become a PALLADIUM member today to secure your copy!
As we accelerate toward superintelligence, our quest for self-mastery takes a spiritual turn. The Faustian spirit accelerates technology toward a mastery so total that its intelligence becomes, to its human creators, unintelligible.
Faced with a breakdown of fundamental control systems, the ancient virtue of self-mastery is returning, perhaps unbidden, to the conscience at the frontier. The Faustian bargain was once a bad deal: perhaps it still is. Perhaps it isn't.
When it comes to sustaining cybernetic architecture in a world where that architecture can annihilate itself, we must carefully consider what self-mastery can and cannot do. Who can we trust to tell us with authority? Fyodor Dostoevsky might give us the answer.
James Poulos is the Editorial Director of Frontier, a non-resident senior fellow at FAI, and the author of the forthcoming book Golden Age Problems. The author will be signing exclusive copies of his previous book "Human Forever" at the talk. You can follow him at @jamespoulos.
This is a ticketed event, those without tickets or violation of the dress code will be turned away.
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This event is hosted with the Avalon Institute, which is building a home for cultural ambition in San Francisco You can follow them at @AvalonInst.
October 30th James Poulos will also be speaking in Berkeley at the Avalon Exposition, a multiday festival dedicated to the study of mankind, with live theater, music, DNA sequencers, and additional speakers such as Samo Burja and Keoni Gandall.