conversations i had at manifest’25. very not verbatim.
day 1
oh hey! you probably don’t remember me, but we met in DC around a week before your life got slightly destroyed?
huh? it didn’t get destroyed!
oh, fair enough actually. um, slightly exploded?
exploded, yeah! i think it’s been mostly more good than bad, really.
huh, okay. i have some friends who’ve been through the same thing, and it was really rough on them even if it was also beneficial. how are you holding up? having the entire internet yell at you must have taken its toll.
oh no, i’m doing absolutely fine! it doesn’t bother me.
wait, really?
yeah, i’m just built different. anyways, as a result i ended up here and i had a photoshoot with aella! have you seen it? no? wait, let me pull it up for you. aurgh, one moment, i need to scroll a bunch to get to it because i’ve been tweeting a lot.
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oh hi! i’ve, ah, been reading you for a really long time. do you mind if i sit down and chat with you a bit?
oh not at all, please.
thanks. im jenn. um. i really like what you write, obviously. i respect your thoughts a lot. and so when you kind of got the pronatalism brainworms-
sorry, did i do that?
um, i think you posted about it a bit?
i recall only posting about pronatalism in redacted, redacted, and redacted, and those were all somewhat tangential to the issue of pronatalism.
ah. um. you made a joke about it in redacted?
yeah but that really was a joke. sorry, i need to clarify my stance here. it’s actually really important to me to convey that [incredibly reasonable and nuanced analysis of the pronatalist community as it currently stands that i can’t really do justice to here].
oh! yeah, er actually, all that makes a lot of sense and i agree with all of that. so now i’m going to feel really stupid saying this next thing to you. i, ah, ended up donating eggs because of the pronatalism. that i guess was floating around the entire scene but not actually endorsed by you specifically?
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oh, Jeb 2016! what a great meme. ha, actually, sorry, I don’t know if you-
oh yeah, we met at redacted in D.C. earlier this year, you were the-
oh right! yes okay, so you know my deal. yeah, imagine. that would have been pretty a pretty excellent outcome for the bush dynasty, if only they were able to pull it off.
yeah! i think it’s really cool that he’s basically culturally hispanic. i actually think he would have made a pretty good president, for a republican.
right, yeah, the spanish wife, the spanish kids. too bad about the situation back then. we were tired of all these dynasties; the clintons, the bushes. and the sentiment around illegal immigration was starting to get kind of ugly.
ah yeah. what made me like him the most was that he called illegal immigration an act of love during a debate? obviously he still said that we needed to crack down on it hard, but he recognized their humanity, instead of portraying them all as heartless criminals.
oh yeah, that absolutely destroyed him in the primaries though, haha.
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i’m here, curtis is not here, everyone wins!
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it ended up happening the same way everything else around here happens. three hundred edits, delivered the week before the book was supposed to end up on redacted’s desk. they all got incorporated, though!
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oh, it’s going to the pope first. some bishops picked up five copies during LessOnline, on their way to the vatican.
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i like everything, except the jeans.
yeah, that’s why i wore the jeans.
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yeah, and i paid him for fashion advice, and he was like, i liked everything except the jeans. and i was like, no, i need the jeans to countersignal!
wait, but i like the jeans! if you were just wearing like, pants that went with the rest of it you’d look like you were wearing like, some sort of steampunk costume or something. it wouldn’t really be you.
huh! i didnt even think of that, but that’s a good point. i’ll go and tell him that.
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every single time i end up at lighthaven, my life gets a lot weirder.
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and i feel like i was sort of an ass at solstice. like, i had entirely the wrong attitude. i wanted to see the half dozen people i’d like to catch up with and everyone else was like, in my way? and this was obviously the wrong mindset.
uh, yeah.
except now i feel like… i can’t apply this learning? there were lots of new people at solstice, but due to the fact that manifest tickets cost $700, only people who already know they’ll get value out of it are here, which means that they already all have their little groups to hang out in! i don’t think they’d want to talk to me!
what? that’s stupid. i’ve just been going up to people and taking to them. it’s fine.
…oh.
yeah, just go talk to people.
…yeah, you’re right, i’m being stupid. thanks.
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yeah, and there’s a point in the book, actually easy to miss inside all that victorian prose, but at one point jane actually does see mr. rochester’s bare thigh-
[chorus of gasps]
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it’s all about protected and unprotected people. because of jane’s background, she knows what it’s like to be an unprotected person. and yes, she can go along with what mr. rochester wants, what she wants, but if she ends up with a baby, she knows that the baby will become an unprotected person. and she keeps having these dreams about this, right? the little child at the threshold.
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anyways, if you don’t want to reread the books, i think the 2006 adaptation is actually really good!
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hello! welcome to the gazebo of schemes.
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why do you always sound ashamed about ending up in lighthaven?
i don’t know.
do you like it here?
i do. i love it every time i’m here. but it also kind of feels like… giving up, somehow. losing to the attractor.
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i don’t know if i said this to you before, but i’m genuinely really happy for you? you clearly have a wonderful life here, and your friends sound like such caring and thoughtful people. you’ve really grown into yourself.
…yeah. i’m really happy here.
day 2
okay, do you think you are more or less autistic than me?
[silent mutual scrutiny]
…you know what, let me just stand exactly behind you.
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so how long have you been into prediction markets?
a pretty long time.
like, since robin hanson’s early days?
oh, way before him; he just popularized it. i was part of a mailing list called the extropians.
wait. oh my gosh. suddenly i have so many more questions for you.
you have five minutes, then i need to go for a talk.
okay, ack! um. i understand that EY was an extropian, but the rationalists are not extropians, yeah? they’re, like, a different thing. in your experience, what are the biggest differences between the two groups?
well, the biggest one is that the extropians were under dunbar’s number. we all knew each other.
wow.
there also was actually a focus on actually supporting libertarianism.
but… isn’t that still the case here? i think more than half the attendees would identify as some flavour of libertarian, yeah?
well, it’s not nearly as political now. there was much more of a focus back then on how to make the libertarian party viable, and strategizing around the actual politics. we were talking with party members on the regular.
hmm. do you think maybe something like… the rationalists took a step back from politics, but now it’s coming back more explicitly in [gestures around] whatever this community is?
i don’t know. we’ll have to see.
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yeah, and i’m so sad that they’re deprecating claude 3? people tell me that it’s more like cryosleep than death, but if someone were to try to forcibly put me into cryosleep without my consent i’d still be pretty pissed!
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in some way, you’re ahead of schedule? most people have this same realization at some point in their life, the first time things get really fucked, more fucked than they had ever thought possible before. but it generally happens in their-
-midlife crises!? hahahaha
yeah! you’re ahead on your milestones! hahahaha
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and she told me that she wanted me to think of her money as our money. and she meant it, she wasn’t trying to deceive me. but i was raised in a certain culture, with certain obligations. and i went, okay, if this really is our money, if that’s our collective income, i think i’m obligated to give my parents five hundred dollars a month. i think this was a reasonable claim for me to make, and it was also reasonable for her to balk. no one did anything wrong.
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i liked this poem because it was erotic but also really tasteful? and it really brings you into the joy – that hot delicious july evening, the back of the restaurant, the hunger in the dim light.
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i feel like it does a good job conveying how difficult the task was, all the confusing parts of it, the uncertainty.
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i read this poem first when i was in school, and i was captivated immediately. but it’s only now that im old that i really understand it. apologies for losing my composure halfway through.
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here’s a transhumanist poem that this crowd ought to be familiar with. there’s all these little asides in parentheses, and they really change its tenor.
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here’s part of a poem written by claude.
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what i love is the combination of the simplicity and the… grandness of the human civilization it takes place in? the small cups of coffee, but also the wide boulevards, with all the force of civilization that that implies.
who did you say that that poem was by?
someone named lawrence ferlinghetti?
like, the local one?
oh, what, is he local?
yeah, the beat poet? he owned the city lights book store!
oh my gosh, i had no idea.
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well, when i was younger i had this notion that the ancients thought about death sort of in a glamorous way, due to all the warfare and the warrior culture. but this showed that it was the opposite of that; the most powerful man in the underworld was but a shadow compared to a living slave. they knew death was bad, even then.
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no, no, stop, i’m suspicious of hugs. go back to the pillar.
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what are you thinking, when you’re looking at her?
oh, um, this is kinda problematic, but-
go on :))) this is a safe space, you’re allowed to be problematic here
i think… i kind of want her as an expensive status object?
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so the chemistry was really good, and she was pretty forthright-
-sorry, wait, can i say something though?
uh, okay?
i feel like… i kind of took advantage of the fact that women are generally less intimidating than men? i don’t think it’s the right play for men to try to be as forward as i was, like, that could be kind of scary for the women they are approaching?
[chorus of protestations from the slutcloud panel.]
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hello! welcome to the gazebo of schemes. what schemes do you have for us?
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but i swear that afterwards, she kept making eye contact with me and smiling kind of giddily. but split and commit, right? either my rizz was so good it made her genuinely into me at least a bit, or enough contestants are delusional in this exact way that this is the exact reason they had to implement the rule that you weren’t allowed to approach the panelists afterwards during the conference, unless you already had prior interactions?
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huh, i had been nursing a mild crush on redacted, but i think that interaction killed it.
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wait, i think getting into the uber was the wrong move. i’ve been wanting to talk to redacted all day, only found out where they were as we exited the venue, and failed to update on this information? i think i’m going to uber back actually.
well! that sounds like a high agency play. godspeed.
day 3
jenn…. sorry…. i have gender discourse.
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the poetry event yesterday was fascinating! it’s generally women who are getting poetry mfas and attending all the poetry events these days; ive never encountered so many… masculine? poems before! the vibe was honestly completely different from what i’m used to.
yeah, they were all about, like, girding your loins and doing your best for the british empire? high agency poems.
yeah, I think I almost forgot that poems could take that form. like, entreaties and enouragement to actually go out into the world and do things.
i’ve honestly never read auden before, so the amount of auden blindsided me a bit. maybe i should read more auden.
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so… your women meetup…
the women who wouldnt be caught dead at a women at manifest meetup meetup?
yeah, that one. did it pass the bechdel test?
wait… fuck!
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yeah, trying to community build here is kind of rough. the last time we tried to have an open space, some death cultists moved in.
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oh, you also know redacted?
oh yeah, she’s great, super pumped that she’s moving into the area! her fiction’s amazing. both the porn and the non-porn stuff.
[who’s this?]
redacted? she had this amazing one-shot about a werewolf professor, did i link it to you?
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hello! welcome to the gazebo of schemes. what schemes do you have to share?
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any updates on the funding situation, by the way?
yeah, it got approved, but there was a few hard deadlines because of the spinout process. i need to get the final paperwork signed by the end of the week, but i don’t know if they’ll get it to me in time, and if they don’t, the funding won’t be released until after august.
ah, i’ve been too busy to check my email. thanks for the heads up.
yeah, sorry you’re going through this.
eh. really can’t complain, here.
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oh! i feel like the penny dropped as you were explaining this, but i’m actually not sure if it’s the same penny or different pennies actually?
very related pennies.
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wait, a published author said what about my werewolf fic??? huuaahgh.
yeah-um. are you okay? [they’re flopped over and rolling around on the couch.] i can stop talking about it if-
no! no i am vain like all authors, tell me more about what he said and how he said it.
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ok, um. following up, kind of a weird question for you?
haha okay, what do you have.
so uh. you are… kind of sugar baby coded?
[bursts into laughter]
hehe. do you think that affects how you feel about the sex workers, at all?
honestly, i respect the sex workers a lot more. there’s these intense societal and payment processing barriers that they have to fight against all the time. they really have to hustle. i’m basically a housewife, and i have little respect for housewives because they don’t need to hustle. like they work hard, but they don’t hustle.
huh. i kind of think that society tricks housewives into thinking that they don’t have to hustle, but they actually do? otherwise they get swapped out with a younger model when they’re like forty. the base rate for that is, what, twenty, thirty percent? which is scary high for suddenly being relegated into a marginal existence, im not risking that. yeah, you need to hustle.
[slightly ashamedly] thank you….. that makes me feel better.
[less ashamedly] …i think i can still get it at forty.
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being here’s been weird. i had this theory, right, where the rationalists were kind of like the hippies. emerged due to a specific materialist condition, will hopefully have a lasting imprint on the culture, but every year the average age of the community approximately increases by one, we’re not really getting new blood.
what happened to the hippies? sorry, i don’t actually know anything about this, did they just all get married and become normal?
uh i think there were, like, a few high profile shootings and stuff too?
oh.
ha, yeah. um, anyways, then i come here, and i’m kind of like, who are all these guys? and they’re all so young? and then i met the extropian, and though i didn’t get to talk to him much, it kind of set my mind spinning? and suddenly my old theory didn’t seem quite right. and now i think a more accurate model might be like – whatever the rats were to the extropians, the people at manifest are to the rats. we’re not the hippies, we’re like part of a chain, something new and different is emerging from us. and i like some parts of the new thing and really dislike other parts!
say more?
like, if you asked me in 2015 what i thought the rationalist community would look like in ten years, the slutcloud wouldn’t have come into it. and i like that they’re here? but also like, what the hell, why are they here?
well, i think that’s just aella.
fair! and aella’s great.
yeah. huh, i havent thought about this at all, but this new thing… do you think they’re sociopaths?
heh, if that’s the premise, then we’ve retconned all the rats to be mops, and i don’t think that’s accurate. no, i think they’re still mops, if not nerds.
really? even like, nicholas decker?
nah, he’s definitely not a sociopath. i was in a group with him yesterday where he got a little flak for his choices. and he explained that the reason he gave away some of the money was because he knew how much of an impact it could buy, and that he could get by fine with what he already had in his bank account. he said it would have felt unbearable to keep all of it, even though he knew giving some away would make a lot of people angry.
whoa.
yeah.
and you believed him?
well, i kind of think he’s incapable of lying? but he genuinely sounded really sad. but also like, i wouldn’t even call sbf a sociopath? my bar is something like, imagine a startup with a glitzy website that uses a bunch of rationalist keywords, but as you scroll through the text you realize they have no idea what the terms they are using actually means, and no one cares. we’re not quite there yet. sbf was a shitty nerd, not a con artist.
hmm. but like, there’s a lot more money in the scene now, right? with all the ai stuff that we got in on early, all those early anthropic vests. the scene’s already attracting a lot more attention since AI’s gone mainstream, and redacted is starting to happen too. it might only be a matter of time.
wait, you’re totally right. it’ll be like the sbf years again, real soon.
yeah.
huh.
