Scott Alexander reviews Robin Hanson's 'Age of Em', praising its creativity while critiquing its assumptions and arguing the future may be even stranger. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews Robin Hanson's book 'Age of Em', which predicts a future where human brain emulations ('ems') dominate the economy. The book explores in great detail how an em society might function, with copied minds running at different speeds and bizarre social dynamics. While praising Hanson's creativity and rigor, Scott critiques some of the assumptions and argues the future may be even stranger and potentially more dystopian than Hanson envisions, possibly resembling Nick Land's idea of an 'Ascended Economy' detached from human values. Shorter summary