The Singularity Is a Story, Not a Prison: My Philosophy Portal Interview with Cadell Last

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After 300+ interviews on Singularity.FM, it still feels strange to sit on the other side of the microphone. But when Cadell Last invited me on Philosophy Portal, saying no was never an option. Cadell is one of the very few people who can push me on the deep questions and make me enjoy every minute of it. The last time we spoke, back in 2022, we spent hours on Nietzsche, transhumanism, and the future of the human story. This time, he turned the tables and put me in the hot seat.

The occasion is Singularity Summer: eight live lectures on machine learning, story, and the singularity that I am co-teaching this July and August with machine learning expert Thomas Hamelryck, hosted by Cadell at Philosophy Portal. This interview functions as pre-course content, but do not let that fool you. It stands entirely on its own because Cadell did what Cadell does: he asked the questions that go all the way down.

We started with the two books that blew my mind in 2006: Ray Kurzweil‘s The Singularity Is Near and Charlie Stross’s Accelerando. They are, in a sense, the same book. One is non-fiction, the other is science fiction, and it was the story, not the graphs, that changed my life. Because we are not wired for facts. We are wired for story. Facts are useless until you wrap them in a story, and it is the story that tells you what is treasure and what is garbage.

From there, we went after the biggest sacred cow of them all: Kurzweil’s teleology. I have enormous respect for Ray. I have interviewed him, spent hours in his office, and consider him both a genius and a genuinely humble human being. But his six epochs of the singularity converge into a single linear storyline where the universe literally wakes up. In my view, that is creationism in scientific clothing: it promises the same heaven of immortality and abundance, and it treats humanity as the chosen species. The same goes for Silicon Valley’s claim that the march of technology is inevitable and unstoppable. That is not a prediction. That is a prison. And I refuse to live in it, because I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria and watched the same technology build socialism in the East, democracy in the West, and fascism before both. The big choices are never technological. They are ethical, which is to say political.

During our 80 min conversation with Cadell, we cover:

• Why we are wired for story, not facts
• How a Bulgarian army nickname became “Socrates,” and why it started as an insult
• My master’s thesis on drone warfare, and why I argued we’re witnessing not a clash of civilizations but machines choosing whether a human will live or die
• 300 resumes, one failed interview, and the crazy thought that started Singularity Weblog
• Why my podcast was never about technology, because content is just data and context is king
• The Context Effect: why AI can process gargantuan amounts of data but must borrow its context, its sense of signal and noise, good and bad, entirely from us
• Karl Schroeder’s advice to treat the singularity as one camera lens among many, which shattered my single-model worldview
• Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance, and why you cannot declare a golden age without first inventing a dark age
• Gramsci’s time of monsters, between the old world dying and the new one struggling to be born
• Frank Herbert’s Dune, and why a 100 percent certain future is a prison
• What to expect from Thomas Hamelryck’s four July sessions on machine learning and my four August sessions on ReWriting the Human Story.

If there is one line that captures the spirit of this entire conversation, it is this:

The future is not a prediction. The future is a story. And that means it is up for grabs. You can be a spectator of that story, or you can get your hands dirty and become the author of your own story, both as an individual and, together, as a species.

As always, you can listen to or download the audio file above, or scroll down to watch the full video interview. To show your support, you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Join Us for Singularity Summer

If this conversation resonates with you, it is only the warm-up. Singularity Summer runs through July and August 2026: four sessions on machine learning with Thomas Hamelryck, followed by my four sessions on story, capitalism, politics, technology, and rewriting the human story. All eight live lectures cost 100 Euros, and every session is recorded, so you get lifetime access even if you join late or miss a date. You can find all the details in my Singularity Summer announcement.