Don’t Look Up
Article
Don’t Look Up is a recurring film in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 04, 2022 and October 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Don’t Look Up is primarily a movie about existential risk”; “The President hits on a new slogan, “Don’t Look Up!”, which pacifies her supporters”; “There’s a debate over whether Don’t Look Up is supposed to be pushing the progressive line”. It most often appears alongside America, COVID, Elon Musk.
Metadata
- Category: Films
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: January 04, 2022
- Last seen: October 10, 2024
Appears In
- Movie Review: Don’t Look Up
- Highlights From The Comments On “Don’t Look Up”
- SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story
Related Pages
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- America (2 shared issues)
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- COVID (2 shared issues)
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- Elon Musk (2 shared issues)
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- New York Times (2 shared issues)
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- 80,000 Hours (1 shared issues)
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- @GroundHogStrat (1 shared issues)
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- A.I. salons (1 shared issues)
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- ACX Discord (1 shared issues)
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- Adam McKay (1 shared issues)
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- ADUs (1 shared issues)
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- Aerojet XLR-132 (1 shared issues)
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- AGI (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Don’t Look Up is primarily a movie about existential risk, and many great people have already reviewed it as such. I’m going to be less virtuous and use it as a springboard to talk about politics.
Inline links: many great people
The comet becomes visible in the night sky. The President hits on a new slogan, “Don’t Look Up!”, which pacifies her supporters and quells resistance. Conspiracy theorists write deranged blog posts saying there is no comet, and it’s all a Marxist plot. Hollywood celebrities say dumb things about how we “need to consider both sides” and “not let the comet divide us”.
Unfortunately, Don’t Look Up can’t stop contradicting itself.
Hmm .. I didn't come away from Don't Look Up with the message of "Trust The Experts". Rather I came away with a sense of futility that we're doomed as a species due to our inability to discover and form consensus around the truth. I thought the movie did a great job of relaying that, given that humanity is completely wiped out by the end.
Author, IMHO, really misses the point. Even though the satire bites and the allegory is spot on, Don’t Look Up is a COMEDY. Getting serious about the license it takes on characters and cliches is an error of over-thinking.
Another major endorsement came from SAG-AFTRA (formerly Screen Actors Guild), a politicially influential union of Hollywood creatives. Their union’s letter to the governor makes it sound like they're against AI copying their voices and stealing their jobs, and willing to support basically any anti-AI legislation no matter how distantly related to their specific concern. But a later open letter showed more specific interest in existential risks, and a few people in show business have been consistent allies. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is a long-time effective altruist (and married to Tasha McCauley, one of the OpenAI board members who voted out Sam Altman last November). And I was also moved by support from Adam McKay, who directed of Don’t Look Up (a film about people ignoring an impending asteroid strike, which AI safety advocates praised as a good intentional or unintentional metaphor for the current landscape).