A post-slop world with Etymology Nerd | Last Summer Lecture Series

Adam Aleksic is Etymology Nerd and makes popular shorts about etymology, internet anthropology, and the spread of ideas online. He’ll join us to talk about his story and what a post slop world may look like.

Here is one of his shorts, on digital egregore summoning: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c9wvEMrkJFc

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The Last Summer Lecture Series

Suppose that this was the last time we could steer the world before radical change. Where should we go together? Should we imagine a world with AI from scratch, or build on the great conversation of history? Do we return to stories of old, or to ourselves, or each other? Xiq invites some of his favorite intellectuals to answer these questions.

Transcript

0:00 · Oh, okay. There’s lots of change. Chaos.

0:02 · Where do we crown? Where what what can we rely on? Where are our values? And where do we want to go? Like chaos is a leather in the words of middle finger from Gro. Uh it’s a time where we get to adjust the course of the world or our collective path, you know. So, how how do we pursue the good? What is the good?

0:28 · uh how we pursue the truth and beauty and we’ve had a few speakers already.

0:37 · I I recall Jake Orthne uh screening this movie and talking about the cognitive science of psychedelics and meditation.

0:46 · I think that’s important to to like reflect on how we perceive reality in the first place. We had Austin Chen talking about starting companies and um AI for epistics coordination. And last week we had Henry, our friend Henry who was a an open source hero and Christian and um I I I I’m mentioning

1:14 · this because he suggested that one of the big he just come back from this conference on Ivana Lynch is a a Christian theologian uh in Philipp Catholic and he’s saying, “Well, Ivan says friendship one-on-one relationships um are a very robust thing to grab on and probably the best that he has.”

1:42 · So, this is a little recap of what we’ve been finding over over the the lecture series. uh and also introduce Adams.

1:52 · So I think I I I know Adam because I saw him in my in the community archive this way. I think he’s where I first got into Adam is a linguist and Adam makes short videos about etmology and digital anthropology.

2:11 · Uh, I think Adam has this, you know, very energetic style. like he’s very prolific and I feel like he covers a huge swath of topics and the same kind of geography topics that I that I really love and

2:29 · you know we we kind of have this common interest of of looking at the internet and extracting these trends and these movements and and how you know asking how ideas I don’t know any anything else you like to add yeah uh my background is in linguistics I’m interested in that how ideas spread what it means for ideas to spread. Now even sound like we’re moved from BC to AD and you know we might as well be so things are about to change in a big way and the way ideas are spreading also changing.

3:01 · My research was initially [snorts] how algorithms are shaping language and now AI shaping language. Um seems like those things are happening.

3:11 · So yeah, um I was hoping to talk to you about well I feel like as a student aboutology and thisology there’s there’s this maybe um perspective in in deep cultural ting of of our ideas and how ideas we move over long periods of and I I am trying to you know the move from EC to AD uh is the object of of

3:41 · this um festival and so that’s kind of the big frame of what I’m hoping to discuss.

3:48 · You also mentioned uh being interested in what a post swap world looks like. Uh and I think you know that’s a pretty pretty good chunk to to begin with. It’s like okay we have a new species the new species continent in a you know somewhat different way. Uh Let me do uh I I was just reading your post your subset post on uh SW and I think a good place to start is maybe what is SLO?

4:19 · Exactly right.

4:21 · Yeah.

4:21 · Uh we’re sort of in this place where everything’s ambiently scop um slop I think is important to look at the context of where the word comes from.

4:32 · You always understand word better that way. Obviously there’s the sense of feeding pigs [ __ ] The word slop comes from the old English word [ __ ] Um then in 2015 on 4chan CK board the term slop [laughter] unfortunately describing a conspiracy theory that Jews are mass eating an unassuming audience of degraded quality food while good food themselves. Um and then around 2018 2019 the slop suffix started being productively bracketed onto other things.