LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Supervillain Monologues Are Unrealistic” by Algon


Listen Later

Supervillain monologues are strange. Not because a supervillain telling someone their evil plan is weird. In fact, that's what we should actually expect. No, the weird bit is that people love a good monologue. Wait, what?

OK, so why should we expect supervillains to tell us their master plan? Because a supervillain is just a cartoonish version of a high agency person doing something the author thinks is bad. So our real life equivalent of a supervillain, or rather the generalization of one, is just a very high agency person doing something big. And these people tell you what they're going to do all the dang time! And no one believes them.

Seriously, think about it: what does Elon Musk want to do? Go to mars and make a non-woke ASI. What does he do? Try to go to Mars and make non-woke ASI. What does he say he's going to do? Go to mars and make non-woke ASI. What do most people think he's going to do? IDK, something bad or something good depending on their politics. They probably don't know what his plans are, in spite of him repeatedly saying what they are. Instead, they hallucinate whatever [...]

---

First published:

October 31st, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/azzEWbNncapwNzngx/supervillain-monologues-are-unrealistic

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,330 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,453 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

8,557 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,182 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

93 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by The Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, Daniel Barcay and Aza Raskin

Your Undivided Attention

1,601 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,927 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

95 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

511 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,512 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,931 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

545 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

131 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

94 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

467 Listeners