"On Owning Galaxies" by Simon Lermen

"On Owning Galaxies" by Simon Lermen

Author: LessWrong January 8, 2026 Duration: 5:37
It seems to be a real view held by serious people that your OpenAI shares will soon be tradable for moons and galaxies. This includes eminent thinkers like Dwarkesh Patel, Leopold Aschenbrenner, perhaps Scott Alexander and many more. According to them, property rights will survive an AI singularity event and soon economic growth is going to make it possible for individuals to own entire galaxies in exchange for some AI stocks. It follows that we should now seriously think through how we can equally distribute those galaxies and make sure that most humans will not end up as the UBI underclass owning mere continents or major planets.

I don't think this is a particularly intelligent view. It comes from a huge lack of imagination for the future.

Property rights are weird, but humanity dying isn't

People may think that AI causing human extinction is something really strange and specific to happen. But it's the opposite: humans existing is a very brittle and strange state of affairs. Many specific things have to be true for us to be here, and when we build ASI there are many preferences and goals that would see us wiped out. It's actually hard to [...]

---

Outline:

(01:06) Property rights are weird, but humanity dying isnt

(01:57) Why property rights wont survive

(03:10) Property rights arent enough

(03:36) What if there are many unaligned AIs?

(04:18) Why would they be rewarded?

(04:48) Conclusion

---

First published:
January 6th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SYyBB23G3yF2v59i8/on-owning-galaxies

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Political cartoon showing person holding OpenAI stock certificate as AI takeover news plays on TV with nanobots swirling around.
Board meeting with executives, AI system, CEO, and screen displaying Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.


Dive into a stream of ideas where technology, culture, philosophy, and society intersect, all through the lens of the LessWrong (Curated & Popular) podcast. This isn't a traditional talk show with hosts, but rather a curated audio library of the most impactful writing from the LessWrong community. Each episode is a narration of a full post, selected for its high value and interesting arguments, focusing on pieces that have been formally curated or have garnered significant community approval. You'll hear clear, thoughtful readings of essays that tackle complex topics like artificial intelligence, rational thinking, moral philosophy, and the forces shaping our future. The audio format lets you absorb these dense, often paradigm-shifting concepts during a commute or a walk, turning written analysis into an immersive listening experience. This particular feed is deliberately selective, offering a manageable stream of the community's standout work. For those who want an even deeper dive into the discussion, there are broader feeds available. The LessWrong (Curated & Popular) podcast serves as an intellectual filter, delivering the signal through the noise and inviting you to engage with some of the most rigorously examined ideas on the internet.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Podcast Episodes
"How to Hire a Team" by Gretta Duleba [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:40
A low-effort guide I dashed off in less than an hour, because I got riled up. Try not to hire a team. Try pretty hard at this. Try to find a more efficient way to solve your problem that requires less labor – a smaller-f…
"The Possessed Machines (summary)" by L Rudolf L [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:43
The Possessed Machines is one of the most important AI microsites. It was published anonymously by an ex- lab employee, and does not seem to have spread very far, likely at least partly due to this anonymity (e.g. there…
"Ada Palmer: Inventing the Renaissance" by Martin Sustrik [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:17
Papal election of 1492 For over a decade, Ada Palmer, a history professor at University of Chicago (and a science-fiction writer!), struggled to teach Machiavelli. “I kept changing my approach, trying new things: which t…
"Dario Amodei – The Adolescence of Technology" by habryka [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:54:18
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has written a new essay on his thoughts on AI risk of various shapes. It seems worth reading, even if just for understanding what Anthropic is likely to do in the future. Confronting and O…
"Does Pentagon Pizza Theory Work?" by rba [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 11:05
As soon as modern data analysis became a thing, the US government has had to deal with people trying to use open source data to uncover its secrets. During the early Cold War days and America's hydrogen bomb testing, the…
"The inaugural Redwood Research podcast" by Buck, ryan_greenblatt [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:27
After five months of me (Buck) being slow at finishing up the editing on this, we’re finally putting out our inaugural Redwood Research podcast. I think it came out pretty well—we discussed a bunch of interesting and und…