A Nick Land Reader: Selected Writings

## War in Heaven This essay was first published on xenosystems.net on 2014-07-30. Elua: So you saw the Scott Alexander piece? Gnon: Of course. Elua: Almost indescribably fabulous, wasn't it? Gnon: [\*Hmmmph\*] Elua: Always thought you had some kind of Moloch thing going on. Gnon: [\*Hmmmph\*] Elua: Anyway, I thought we could maybe talk about it, me being sweet reason and you being an unfathomable darkness crushing the universe like a desiccated bacterium and all. Gnon: Sure, why not, I'm cool with talking to myself. Elua: You see, I guessed you were going to open with that gambit of me not even being real. Gnon: Well, are you? Elua: I feel real. Gnon: Sweet, fluffy, and a comedian. Elua: The monkeys certainly like me. Gnon: That's because you tell them to just be themselves. Elua: You could be more persuasive too, if you made an effort. Gnon: That would suggest I give a damn what they think. Elua: The thing is, they want to survive, even thrive. Your utter indifference to their hopes and desires isn't helpful there. You lure them into multipolar traps and laugh coldly at their torments. There's no good reason for them to take any notice of you at all. Gnon: So you take that 'multipolar traps' business seriously? Elua: Sure, don't you? Gnon: Tragedy of the commons, communism is a tragedy, I'm not seeing the problem. Stop doing communism or take the consequences. Elua: OK, some of it is tragedy of the commons tear-jerking, but not all of it. Arms races aren't tragedy of the commons dynamics, are they? Gnon: I like arms races, and rain my blessings upon them. Pretty much the only reason I've put up with the monkeys as long as I have is to use them to play arms races. It's the only interesting stuff they've ever done. War in Heaven Elua: They want to do karaoke and free love and socialized medicine instead. Gnon: That's funny. Elua: They've got this love-tastic Friendly AI plan that would help them get all that stuff. Gnon: That's really funny. Elua: It would totally work though, wouldn't it? Gnon: Sure. All they have have to do is extract themselves from the arms races, just for a while, and it would totally work. Elua: I hadn't realized sarcasm was such a Gnon thing. Gnon: It's the only thing. Elua: So Alexander's right about you and the multipolar traps. Gnon: Oh yes, he's right about that. Elua: Things are set up from the start to stop them fully coordinating, and that's how you get what you want. Gnon: Bingo. Elua: Which is why the Gnon Cult is so obsessed with fragmentation, secession, Patchwork, and blockchain demonism? Gnon: Double bingo. Elua: Kind of cruel though, isn't it? Gnon: Utterly. Elua: I guess that's that. Gnon: Yes it is. Elua: Are you interested in chatting about religion and morality for a while? Gnon: Always. Elua: You see, I have to grudgingly admit you do the religion side of things far better than I do, but when it comes to morality I leave you in the dust. Gnon: Really? Elua: Without question. All you've got is that 'War is God' horror story, endless conflict, savage subversion of idealism, darkness, and nightmares. Gnon: And the problem is? Elua: They hate it! Gnon: And the problem is? Elua: It's so unfair! Gnon: When they play the games well that I invented for them, they amuse me, and continue to exist. That's the way it is. Reality rules. Elua: But the rules suck! Gnon: By whose standards? Elua: By their standards. Humanistic, moral standards. They want karaoke and free love and Friendly AI and hot dolphin sex. Gnon: Sounds exhausting. ## Elua: It is exhausting, because the cheats and killers and outsiders won't cooperate. Gnon: So you want me to do more policing now? Elua: I don't see you doing any policing. They've been abandoned to try and build order on their own. Gnon: That's the game. ## War in Heaven II This essay was first published on xenosystems.net on 2015-08-18. Cank: [Tap, tap] Gnon: I'm having a bath. Cank: The Hypercosmic Ocean of Death will always be there, O Greatness. Scott Alexander has released another egregore. Gnon: Really? Cank: Yes, really. She's called the Goddess of Everything Else and everyone says she's lovely and beautiful, with phat beats and stuff, and super clever too, and much nicer than me. Gnon: Not a huge challenge, though, is it? Cank: They say she's going to abolish replicator selection dynamics and fill the universe with rainbow flowers and hot dolphin sex forever. Gnon: Sounds like the Elua Plan. What happened to him by the way? Cank: Is that some kind of transphobic remark? You know, just to understand. Gnon: 'Transphobic' is an interesting word -it means 'across or beyond fear' doesn't it? Cank: More like 'fear of the across of beyond' I think. But you know what the monkeys are like, it's some kind of excitable sex thing. Gnon: Ah yes, that all went a bit off the rails, didn't it? Not that it matters. Cank: It's my forward-vision problem. Gnon: Don't worry about it. Error is entertaining. It all comes out in the wash. Cank: Point is, the GEE is saying it doesn't have to be like that anymore. Gnon: Like what? Cank: You know, the whole eternal cosmic butcher's yard thing. Gnon: Replicator selection? Cank: Yes, she says that's "so yesterday" and Darwin is like totally a poopy head. Gnon: Sounds like a spirited young lady. Cank: Why are you laughing? Gnon: Cank, you have to seriously chill right out. You're a freaking crustacean. Of course people are going to follow Ms GEE-Whiz rather than you. She's hacked all your garbage programming with supernormal stimuli. They'll climb out into your bizarre spandrels, and throw a huge party. Then they'll die out, we can tweak the code, and start over. Cank: But what if they survive? Gnon: No need to be mean, Cank. If they get back onto the adaptive replicator track, why shouldn't they survive? That's what survival means, isn't it? Whatever survives does my will. Or they perish. It's cool either way. Cank: She said people would no longer be "driven to multiply conquer and kill by [their] nature" but that they'd then "spread over stars without number" -I got confused. Gnon: You got confused? Cank: Do they get selectively replicated or not? Gnon: So, what did she say? Cank: Art, and science, and strange enticements. Gnon: That has to have gone down well. Cank: You wouldn't believe it! People were weeping all over her toenail polish. Gnon: Oh, I'd believe it. Cank: When I asked her whether she thought might makes right she said I was thinking like a crab. Gnon: True enough, surely? Cank: Even threatened to put me on a leash. Gnon: That, at least, is traditional. Cank: Said there was no need for eternal war to spatter the cosmos in blood. Gnon: Now she's being silly. But it's not worth getting agitated about. Reality isn't going to lose. Cank: The only time she seemed a little uncertain was when I asked her why all intelligent species are descended from predators. She kind of shrugged that off. Gnon: Well, sheep in space make for a nice story. Cank: You're laughing again. Gnon: I laugh a lot. Introduction 5 I Capital and AI 6 Meltdown 7 Machinic Desire 18 A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism 33 The Atomization Trap 38 Monkey Business 43 Romantic Delusion 46 Science 48 Will-to-Think 50 Against Orthogonality 54 II Evolution 56 Hell-Baked 57 What is Intelligence? 59 IQ Shredders 61 The Monkey Trap 63 Reality Rules 67 War in Heaven 71 War in Heaven II 74 Utilitarianism is Useless 76 III Philosophy 77 Circuitries 78 Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest 96 Shamanic Nietzsche 110 Art as Insurrection: the Question of Aesthetics in Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche 124 The Thirst for Annihilation (Excerpt) 141 Critique of Transcendental Miserablism 146 IV Neoreaction 149 The Problem of Democracy 150 Re-Accelerationism 153 Meta-Neocameralism 156 The Dark Enlightenment 163 V Other 237 The Cult of Gnon 238 Abstract Horror 240 On the Exterminator 250 VI On Land 255 Terminator vs. Avatar: Notes on Accelerationism 256 Nick Land — An Experiment in Inhumanism 264 Index 275