Reflections at 250

Milestones matter

It’s important to celebrate milestones. When something bad happens to us, we mull it over for hours or days. When something good happens, we pass it by and forget about it almost immediately. That is especially true of me.

The number of subscribers reached 100 on April 3. Extropic Thoughts hit the 250 milestone on July 11, about 3.5 months since the first post. Extropic Thoughts is read across 31 US states and 42 countries.

250 doesn’t sound exciting or impressive when you look at the blogs with tens of thousands of subscribers. In most of those cases, the writers brought a large audience with them from a previous blog or publication or from Twitter. I had the benefit of none of that. My old blog has been moribund and I never built a Twitter following. I’ve only started to do that – reluctantly! – very recently. I started from zero. Now there’s a “25” in front of the zero. Progress!

I had a blog on Blogspot. Technically, I still do, but I’ve solidly moved to Substack. I like the way Substack makes managing subscriptions and creating content easy. I’d like a few more text formatting options but overall I’m enthusiastic about this forum. I also like the company. I find plenty to disagree with, of course, but also an unusual amount to agree with. I see far less nonsense from misnamed “progressives” and much interest in other political approaches along with intense and intelligent discussions of technology.

I would like 250 to become 1,000 and more. I’m under no illusion about this being likely or soon. The Substack blogs with the greatest readership are almost all political blogs. Those that write angry pieces grab more attention – although the level of intelligence is much higher than on Twitter and many other forums. I enjoy developing thoughts in writing and having a smart audience of reasonable size motivates me.

Top posts

Currently, the top three posts in terms of views are the following, with the first two well ahead of the third:

Against Doomerism, For AI Progress. This has 2.75k views. That stands out also because I posted it just a couple of weeks after I started the blog and it was emailed to only 73 recipients. on April 2, 2023. Another reason it stands out is that is resulted in 50 new subscriptions! That’s way more than any other post. I think this is due to some people on Twitter picking up on it. Finally, it currently has the most comments at 43.

Existential Risk vs. Existential Opportunity. Probably the same Twitter factors helped this one to number two position with 1.36k views.

Embrace the Future limped into third place with 455 views.

Honorable mentions to “Beyond Caution: The Party of Life” which resulted in 7 new subscriptions, and the same for the early “Don’t Panic About AI Collection.” In terms of comments, “Letter to Mother Nature” currently stands in second place with 18 comments.

Audience overlap

Apparently the blogs with which Extropic Thoughts has the greatest overlap in readership are Astral Codex Ten, Noahpinion, Bet On It, The Free Press, Racket News, and The Intrinsic Perspective (also written by a philosopher).

The open sky

I’m rethinking compilation posts. Rather than very short comments on dozens of links, if I continue compilations they will have longer comments on fewer links.

What topics will you see here in the near future? Some topics grab my attention and compel me to write about them if I see a different perspective to present. Those are unpredictable, although some of them are likely to revolve around technological risk and benefits more generally. A clear explanation of how my form of transhumanism – you know, the original one – differs from the kind that cozies up to the World Economic Forum and seems to see people as units to be measured and managed and controlled. I will publish some more of my previous transhumanist writing along with new introductions. This also helps me finish my book collection. You will applications of the Proactionary Principle, some practical transhumanist philosophy, more grappling with those who oppose life extension, my views on what’s wrong with current energy policies and what we should do (or allow to happen) instead, and probably some posts based primarily in economics (that subject was my first love, before philosophy).

Thanks!

Thank you to all my subscribers. You encourage me to make the time to write. I’m not as naturally prolific as some bloggers you will know, so it really does help to know that a growing number of people want to read what I write. My special thanks to the handful of paid subscribers. Also, my thanks to those who provided referrals with a particular shout out to maximumprogress.

If you can, please upgrade to paid subscriber. It will encourage this poor philosopher to keep up this blog. Once I have a few more paid subscribers, I’ll focus on providing more exclusive content.

New interview

For those of you who prefer video to text or like a mix, here is a new interview of me by Tim Ventura on transhumanism, life extension, and cryonics.