That was then, this is now, Robin Hanson edition

Robin Hanson, who joined the movement and later became renowned for creating prediction markets, described attending multilevel Extropian parties at big houses in Palo Alto at the time.  “And I was energized by them, because they were talking about all these interesting ideas.  And my wife was put off because they were not very well presented, and a little weird,” he said.  “We all thought of ourselves as people who were seeing where the future was going to be, and other people didn’t get it.  Eventually — eventually — we’d be right, but who knows exactly when.”

That is from Keach Hagey’s The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future, which I very much enjoyed.  I am not sure Robin’s supply of parties has been increasing out here in northern Virginia…