Today's threads (a thread)
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #Toronto: DemocracyXchange, Apr 16
https://www.democracyxchange.org/news/cory-doctorow-to-open-dxc26-on-april-16* #SanFrancisco: 2026 Berkeley Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom, Apr 23
https://www.theberkeleyforum.com/#agenda* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8* #NYC: Techidemic with Sarah Jeong, Tochi Onyibuchi and Alia Dastagir (PEN World Voices), Apr 30
https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/techidemic/12/
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Upcoming appearances:
* #Toronto: DemocracyXchange, Apr 16
https://www.democracyxchange.org/news/cory-doctorow-to-open-dxc26-on-april-16* #SanFrancisco: 2026 Berkeley Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom, Apr 23
https://www.theberkeleyforum.com/#agenda* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8* #NYC: Techidemic with Sarah Jeong, Tochi Onyibuchi and Alia Dastagir (PEN World Voices), Apr 30
https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/techidemic/12/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901* #NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html113/
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901* #NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html113/
Recent appearances:
* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/107414/
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Recent appearances:
* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/107414/
You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
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You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
--
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🥻". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!
--
You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:
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I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3mjmcfghwb222
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
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Thanks. The Pascal’s Wager analogy is good, and I agree that large LLCs pose the more imminent threat but finding common projects with AI doomers isn’t a bad idea..
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Thanks. The Pascal’s Wager analogy is good, and I agree that large LLCs pose the more imminent threat but finding common projects with AI doomers isn’t a bad idea..
Your three or four paragraphs that follow “I am not worried about any of this. I am worried about AI, though. I'm worried a fast-talking AI salesman will convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job…” are the best expression I’ve read yet of where I am on this.
The 2008 economic mess for sure drove a fascist surge, that we’ve not fully recovered from. I fear that COVID, Trump’s nonsense, and then a deep AI burst that pushes a total economic severance between classes could be enough to fully knock the wheels off our democracies.
Come on guys! We were promised a Space Age, not a Dark Age!?
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
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@pluralistic "These aren't risks that could develop in the future. They're the risks we're confronted with today and frankly, they're fucking terrifying."
Couldn't agree more; everything that most of the AI doomers want/care about and can't seem to wrap their heads around is that dismantling capitalism is the way to do it.
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
1/
Nice
Best line of the essay:
"the artificial lifeforms that worry me aren't hypothetical – they're here today, amongst us, endangering the very survival of our species. These artificial lifeforms are called "limited liability corporations" and they are a concrete, imminent risk to the human race"
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/
1/
There is no doubt that Bengio is both very smart and a decent mensch. And he can still be wrong about how advanced "AI" can become. Wrong in the way any deeply learned scientist may simply have wrong intuitions.
Now, who can say what can happen in 100 years? But first we need to (collectively) get to that age, which means solving known and imminent problems, which means building the communication tools that will support problem solving at scales we havent done anytime before.
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@zorrobandito thank you!
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There is no doubt that Bengio is both very smart and a decent mensch. And he can still be wrong about how advanced "AI" can become. Wrong in the way any deeply learned scientist may simply have wrong intuitions.
Now, who can say what can happen in 100 years? But first we need to (collectively) get to that age, which means solving known and imminent problems, which means building the communication tools that will support problem solving at scales we havent done anytime before.
@openrisk @pluralistic
Clarke's First Law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.Asimov's corollary:
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervour and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right. -
Nice
Best line of the essay: "the artificial lifeforms that worry me aren't hypothetical – they're here today, amongst us, endangering the very survival of our species. These artificial lifeforms are called "limited liability corporations" and they are a concrete, imminent risk to the human race"
@sleepy62 @pluralistic whoever decided they got to have limited liability is a name we should know and curse regularly.
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T tokeriis@helvede.net shared this topic
