“Hot women are a super weapon.”
That was the first thought I had when I saw Allison Duettmann, President and CEO of Foresight Institute, give her welcome talk. Which is crass and childish, but also, I hope, forgivable.
Allison Duettmann, President and CEO of Foresight Institute
The Foresight Institute hosts the Foresight Vision Weekend: an event that was held in France, and that was basically women-ran. There’s something to be said about that, especially coming off the previous event which paid lip-service to women participation during Q&A but whose organization and leadership seemed almost entirely male. Here, the opposite was true: the event was female-led: women hosted the various sessions, intro’d the speakers, were the majority of the organizing team, and a fair number of the speakers. This made for a tangibly different event, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Getting there
Foresight’s Vision Weekend was held at a Chateau (that’s French for Castle) in Joigny, France (appropriately). I was in Lisbon, so I had to find my way there.
Lisbon to France (not close)
I flew out with my buddy José, this bright 22 year old I met through Twitter. We flew into the wrong - but cheap - airport and so only arrived at Joigny past midnight. It was dark. Literally. We walked 30 minutes in the dark using our phones' flashlights until we found our AirBnB. Got some 6 odd hours of sleep and went back to the train station where a shuttle was waiting to take us to the castle.
I feel like your event can’t go wrong if your venue is literally a castle. Our first impression was amazing: as we approached the door some people who were having a smoke outside threw an off hand comment about the Starlink satellite dish outside. An old ass castle with brand new internet. What more could you ask for?
We made our way into a big room in the castle after dropping off our jackets and got our bracelets. There were many tiers, but I don’t recall them. I just know I got a ‘non-VIP’ bracelet. (To be VIP you had to either be a Speaker or pay $$$$$ to subsidize the cost-reduced tickets.)
Technically there was a breakfast included but by the time we arrived we only had baguette scraps left. There was coffee though. (I don’t drink coffee.)
We were asked to move to an even larger room, where we all sat on the floor which was covered in carpets and mattresses to hear Allisson welcome and guide us next to the television where she was projecting her computer’s contents.
She gave us the rundown of how the weekend was gonna go: we had two days and 7 tracks, all related to the Foresight Institute’s work. If I understand it correctly, Foresight’s vision is that you can use differential technological development to bring about a great future, and so they organize their work around this.
You had a track on Flourishing futures -- the goal --; cryonics, molecular machines, nanotech and Brain-computer interfaces, crypto and decentralized science, and space -- the means -- and one on funding, innovation, and experimentation -- the meta-means.
Allisson distributed schedules, which looked something like this:
(Apologies for all the commentary, I didn’t know at the time I’d write this)
One of the few things I’ve learned from school is to ignore what a talk is ostensibly about and to pay attention to who’s talking: a good speaker makes any topic interesting, a bad one makes everything boring.
With that in mind I felt fully emotionally ready to bolt from one talk to another if I wasn’t finding it too interesting, and it seemed that everyone had the same thought: talks were punctuated by people moving in between rooms, running from one talk to the next. It created a reassuring feeling of FOMO, like something important was happening.
The first talk I went to was Mark Lutter on Charter Cities. This was one of the most impressive talks I’ve seen in my life and set the bar for the rest of the talks for me. Mark has been working on Charter Cities for a while and is now negotiating a secret 4-way deal between himself, investors, a government, and land-owners somewhere in the Caribbean. The idea is to buy huge plots of land there and do immigration arbitrage: many more competent people want to move to the US than the US allows, with the Caribbean you can move them to the same time zone to have them work to the US from outside the US.
I’m absolutely underplaying it because I could never expect to be as eloquent as Mark: he knows his shit through and through and laces so much nuance and consideration into every answer that your whole mental slack goes into parsing what is being said - none is left for being actively critical of it.
Or so I thought. Shockingly, the audience questions were mostly critical. I can recall two, and they both rounded out to the same thing: “I am a sociologist, therefore I take it as axiomatic that everything sounding vaguely capitalist is bad. Please convince me otherwise” ??????????????????? was my very earnest reaction but other people thought they were reasonable questions or, at least, hid their shock. Mark took them in stride.
There were basically no pauses between talks, and a castle has lots of rooms, and so I yeeted to the next room for the upcoming talk. ‘World-building Wonderful Worlds with AI’. The talk was given by Anna Yelizarova, of the Future of Life Institute. And, again, the same thought haunted me. “Hot women are a --” Fuck, stop it!
She was dressed in very stylish dark robes that made her look like some sort of futuristic -- this doesn’t really matter, does it? The talk was about an essay contest that the Future of Life ran where they asked people to imagine AI futures. She went through a ton of these stories, how they differed, how they were similar, and I saw that one that she had claimed as belonging to her favorites had been co-written by Michael Vassar. A familiar name. Nice.
I went back to my home base room (Funding, Innovation and Experimentation) to hear Danielle Strachmann from ex-Thiel Fellowship, now 1517, tell me all about all the kids they fund doing insane stuff in their 20s, which was equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking. Danielle has crazy accepting energy, which softened the blow. She also seemed ideological. Woman-on-a-mission vibes. A true believer in what she’s doing. I really appreciate people like that.
After the third talk we had speaker reports. We met back in the main room where Allison had intro'd us to the weekend and each speaker had a brief moment to summarize their talks. If you didn’t have FOMO before you definitely had it now. I circled and made hearts around the talks I didn’t manage to go to but wanted to catch later, online, if I could.
After 3 talks while surviving on baguette crumbs my stomach was howling. Thankfully it was time for lunch and we moved out of the castle, and through a beautiful orchard, into a big plastic tent where lunch was being served. It was France, so I thought the food had to be good and I wasn’t wrong: you had salmon and veggies and pies and no limit on how much food you got.
Yet this couldn’t satisfy everyone. The guy who was sitting across from me opened a can of sardines I think he had brought with him and he drank the juice. I thought that was pretty weird. He later told me he was early to Bitcoin. It made more sense.
My buddy José was to my right and to the right of the Bitcoiner was this kid with 3 or 4 iPhones on the table who was hollering non-stop about the ‘Golden meme’, how if you find the right meme you’ll bring about Heaven, and who at some point shouted about how he had lived too much and he didn't want to be reincarnated again and he was done with Samsara. I think he was in his 20s so I found this fucking hilarious and burst out laughing.
After lunch we had more talks. I first went to one by a guy who was working at the OECD and who was gonna talk to us about differential technological development. I hoped he had answers but he seemed to want to ask us questions instead. I yeeted.
I yeeted and caught the last bit of Wes Floyd talking in the crypto room about DeSci and found him articulate, captivating and charming.
In contrast, the next talk I was at consisted of a Frenchman asking the audience to assent to a bunch of sort of insanely detailed propositions. Unfortunately for him there was a German guy in the audience. The culture clash was hilarious: Frenchman wanted to be picturesque and impressionistic (“My system allows me to become an expert in any topic in 4 hours”) while German guy wanted to drill down into the nuts-and-bolts.
I left without trying to make too many waves, to find Allison sitting on a couch in the room (it feels wrong to call the Castle’s divisions “rooms”, lol) where Wes’ talk had been, next to the fireplace, holding the book she just published. I joined her to talk about it and had a delightful conversation.
After this interim we had ‘speaker reports’ once again. FOMO was at an all-time high.
I went outside to get some air, try to calm myself down. The air was chilly and someone had put on some Pink Floyd. Some colorful lights were glowing against the castle. I felt good. Finally at peace.
This peace was short-lived: a couple strolled in, both speakers. My FOMO kicked back in. I hadn’t super paid attention to his speaker report but I had super paid attention to hers and it seemed fascinating. Excited by the opportunity to feed my FOMO I tried to drill down into it with her, right there and then.
She was a biologist and her thesis was that biology doesn’t progress because questions were treated as mysteries instead of puzzles and that this was fucking up the ontology the field was using. Apparently no one could stably hold the intention to “just answer the questions, lol”.
I was eager to know more but the gentleman accompanying her cut off the conversation to ask about me/tell me about himself. I told him I used to work in crypto and he came to believe I was worth millions. He was a chemist and told me about his talk, I think in an effort to get funding. The gist of it was: there’s a limited number of actions you do in a lab, as a chemist. He wants to codify them, translate them into a programming language, and have robotic devices execute those actions for you, making new experiments faster and replicating old ones easier.
This was fascinating and I was starting to warm up to him as a second couple arrived. Also speakers, also scientists. What followed was the biggest scientific dick wagging contest I’ve ever seen. Comparing grants, publications, discussing fabrication in each other fields, ultimately, how smart they were. Very smart, evidently, but also -- Jesus.
Some guy who had come outside to assuage his FOMO, to get his portion of fresh air, unknowingly joined this “conversation” and bolted back in in less than 3 minutes. I felt a lot of solidarity and followed him back in.
Sadly, the time had come for non-VIPs to leave the castle (VIPs were staying the night). Samsara meme guy from lunch came to me and José and introduced us to a sort of brilliant, lovely, chemist he had met. She was very, very passionate about supramolecules and just kept yapping about it non-stop. There’s just something so powerful about a beautiful woman who’s equal parts knowledgeable and passionate about her knowledge. Experiencing that so many times in one day was stunning.
While we talked, Samsara guy opened his hand to reveal two VIP bracelets, in addition to the one on his wrist. He put one on mine, and one on José’s, while we all tried and failed to be discreet. I’m pretty sure the guy who was at the bar now - the breakfast table had been converted into a bar - totally saw through what was going on. No bother, José and I just kept staying back as the rest of the non-VIPs left, hoping we’d slid through the cracks.
Our hopes were dashed. Allison, without any effort, noticed us and, most elegantly, approached us to inform us that the last shuttle back to Joigny was leaving. We got the message, loud and clear, and hoped on it to go back.
Non-VIPs had made a Telegram group where they were organizing dinner for that night. We went to the place everyone was in. It had one huge table but it was full to the brim with 20 people. There was a smaller table upstairs, so José and I went up. Soon we were joined by German guy, from the discussion with the French presenter, and his Estonian friend who was into Space. A French girl also joined us - Victoire - and some American guy - Zeke (sp?).
Dinner was lovely. Zeke was a bit nervous in the beginning so he was being defensively boisterous in a very American way, but eventually chilled out. Space guy was fairly in his own world. German guy was taking notes during the dinner, Victoire was a bit flustered because she was at the first time in an event of this kind and kinda new to the whole memespace. At some point Zeke and I vibed dunking on the rationalists.
It was good fun and went on for 3 or 4 hours, and by the end of which I felt close to the people around me.
Some of us wanted to keep the party going so Victoire, José, Zeke, and I walked our way to a pizza joint in Joigny. At midnight the street lights turned off and we noticed they had been on! Apparently this is what they do there: lights off at midnight, which is why me and José had to walk in the dark the first night.
Despite our pizza bloat we really wanted to keep the party going. Zeke had left for his hotel, but Victoire, José and I kept strolling the unilluminated streets of Joigny looking for a party. Our chances were low but we did find a house that had all its windows shut with blinders but really strong lights coming from inside, and a heavy bass that made them tremble. We pounded on the door for 15 minutes until we finally called it quits and went home.
Day 2
(I could find a nice Internet version for Day 1 schedule too, but it just wouldn’t be the same)
Day 2 was really different. We went back to the main room we had been in (the Funding/Innovation/Experimentation track for me) and collected these sheets that Allisson had been gently corralling people to fill. The sheets were about Existential Hope and they prompted you to write a negative vision for the future, a positive vision, and how you’d hope to avoid the first and get to the second.
We were now meant to use our answers as prompts to illustrate our visions through AI.
This was sort of funny and insane in that our room now had more speakers than attendees and Danielle Fong, who I knew from Twitter and who hadn’t been there the first day, appeared apparently exclusively to take over the AI prompting.
Zeke was sat on the couch working on something else with his friend Prima, some guy in the middle of the room was losing his mind at our difficulties to syncretize all our visions. Mark Lutter and Danielle Strachmann cracked jokes at each other. Retrospectively, maybe it was my favorite moment. The chaotic energy was 🤌
After this, all tracks met in the Main Salon to present both their description of the hopeful future and the AI-generated image they had gotten. This led to a chorus of ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’, and an interesting group feeling. It didn’t anymore feel like a disparate mass of people, the way it had felt just a day before, when Allisson was introducing us to the plan for the weekend.
Just before getting to the Main Salon, German guy - the one who struggled with French romanticism, who took notes during dinner, who I had warmed up to during dinner - said he wanted to intro me to someone. He said he was impressed with how, when dunking with Zeke on the rationalists, I was able to get to the heart of things while being funny. This was the best compliment anyone could give me. Thank you, Alexander.
He intro’ed me to his friend, a (very cute) EA. We had a nice chat until we were interrupted by OECD guy at first, and some Portuguese-American guy who’s into Longevity after. I asked him to tell me about Longevity since the last time I heard someone speak about it it was Aubrey de Grey at the 2014 EA Summit. He said he would, but never did. There’s some weird acrimony between Portuguese-American people and Portuguese people, or Portuguese people in America and Portuguese people in Portugal. I don’t get it.
Anyways, I slid away from the acrimony and crashed into Wes. I matched him up with Chemistry scientist from earlier. He didn’t originally look too pleased but he knew DeSci and Chemistry guy was looking for money even if he was skeptical of crypto. Wes later told me it was one of the most valuable connections he had made at the event, and I was pleased. It’s shocking how easy it’s to give value to people by connecting them, even if they are literally both speakers at the same event.
We had our second delicious French lunch, and I spent most of my time talking to an American crypto investor. She wanted a ride back to Paris and I had just found one for myself via the non-VIP Telegram group. I, graciously, graciously, graciously ceded my place to her only to later discover that she was gonna be riding on (1) a Tesla - I had never - and (2) next to Mark Lutter - the Charter Cities presentation guy. FCUK!
José and I kept staying, and staying, once again, missing all of the shuttles back. I thought everyone would stay as long as they could but they didn’t - they were all leaving. Victoire, from dinner, from party-seeking, had stayed back too, and she had a car, and three takers, but two of them weren’t replying so she had two free seats. Perfect.
After copious saying-byes José, Victoire, and I made our way to the car. José whispered, softly, worried that we wouldn’t fit ‘I hope it’s not a Fiat 500.’ It was. Not only that, but guess who was the fourth person that Victoire had already offered a seat in the car to?
Fucking sociology guy.
Overall: 10/10 would recommend.
I love this fashion magazine style of reporting on a Serious Event
You got suspended on twt! any alts brother?