Cancel me, daddy. Last week, Founders Fund launched Hereticon, a conference for thoughtcrime. Roughly the idea was to invite a bunch of people working on interesting things, or erased from the internet for saying interesting things, to a beautiful spot for a fun party in celebration of the cultural outlier. It was a whirlwind of aliens and biohackers, of drugs and sex and immortality, an incredible set by an incredible artist like fireworks when all was said and done, and a vanilla ice cream safe space — which was frankly very cute. The hotel setting was theatrical. The darkened weather was foreboding. The dress code was anything and everything from academic tweed to leather, whatever, come as you are, we literally just want to talk about weird shit. Topics on stage included but were not limited to: evolution, global warming, geoengineering, polyamory, brain-computer interfaces, ESP, genetic engineering, homemade vaccination, the ideological weaponization of virtual beings, and the apocalypse (there’s a silver lining here, turns out).

We all know the social cost of speaking our mind is too high. But in a world where progress is impossible without new ideas, and almost every new idea must necessarily be in some way non-consensus, a culture of silence is also capable of ending history. Then, frankly, the free speech dialogue is getting tedious. The idea here was not to lament the high cost of speaking. The idea here was to actually speak. And okay sure, the idea here was also to heavily drink (thank you, Peter).

We achieved what we set out to achieve.