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I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.m.wik

I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.

JohnFen 3y ago
Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system. I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.
- idlewords 3y ago
  Altman is proof that there is no IQ cap on human stupidity.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Altman's belief system is "I deserve more money and power", that simple. There's no generous interpretation of building a 25% pre-mine shitcoin, and hawking it to third world countries through sketchy contractors who are explicitly incentivized to collect biometrics from anyone they can, where the claimed purpose of said shitcoin isn't even a little bit implemented, especially all of this in light of your friend and business partner runs fucking Palentir
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    I think most billionaires have the belief system "I deserve more money and power and what's best for me is best for society".
hiatus 3y ago
Could you elaborate on which actions, investments, and marketing strategies led you to that belief?
morkalork 3y ago
I think he's just out of touch. Here's another example: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-ai-with-existential-risk-are-really-not-getting-oppenheimer https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-a...
- gumballindie 3y ago
  There is a certain degree of that for sure. These people really see themselves as “destroyers of worlds” when in fact they are becoming a but amusing in how they try to inflate their importance on the scene. But the sense of urgency cause by the supposed incoming terror, destitution, and despair seem to indicate these people would almost enjoy seeing it happen. Notice how their marketing doesnt focus as much on the benefits as it does on the drawbacks. It’s as if they _want_ the negatives to come to fruition and some sort of radical change to happen as a result of it. Maybe i am reading too much into it and giving sam and the other folks at openai too much credit, but the idea that they might be accelerationists is so crazy that it might actually be fact. Why else would you go above and beyond to build products that you yourself claim can be extremely harmful, they require radical change, other than you wanting for that negative outcome to happen so that you can achieve said change? Didnt the person say or write somewhere that he wants to solve inequality? And since ai would drastically increase inequality by extracting work from the masses and selling it for the profits of the few at massive scale doesnt it is logical to believe that he’a aiming to prove a point. Speeding things up, cause social upheaval, that leads to social change. The definition of that ideology.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It's something that I noticed a long time ago in various subcultures that focus on preparing for some variant of "end times". I think that if you've put a ton of time, money, and effort into preparing for a thing to happen, you begin to want that thing to happen (even if unconsciously). If it doesn't, then all that time, money, and effort was wasted.
    - mempko 3y ago
nkozyra 3y ago
It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  I get that, but it’s almost if someone’s trying to prove the point you just made.
- amelius 3y ago
  This is like saying that anything that can be hacked, should be hacked (instead of fixed).
- nemo44x 3y ago
  That's the main idea behind accelerationism from a Landian perspective. That capitalism is just getting started and that it's unstoppable and that it won't transition into socialisim like Marx predicted but rather will encompass more and more of everything and be the vehicle for the next evolution into a cybernetic species. It's the evolution of evolution and it's unstoppable. So get on with it and learn to love it. Quotes like "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" and Mark Fisher's (CCNU and Nick Land, etc)ideas around capitalism realism sort of sum it up.
  - Nursie 3y ago
    I mean, it’s pretty easy to imagine capitalism precipitating the end of the world …
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      I don't see that per-se. I think it's more likely that capitalism continues to rapidly advance technology to the point where we truly do evolve evolution. So a certain part of the global population will have access to DNA synthesizers and other biotech and AI and can reproduce a master race of post-humans that will dominate and eventually annihilate Homosapiens. After a few generations of rapid improvement (a singularity where post-humans and AI merge into a single entity) they'll view the rest of the world as we view other primates today and won't have much use for them. If not through intentional genocide then just being unable to compete for ecosystem, etc. Homosapiens will fade away as Neanderthals did. Capitalism is a system (much more than just an economic system) that allows for selection like this. In a sense a type of market driven Darwinism which chooses how energy is spent developing the tools that allow humans to evolve rapidly into the next thing. That it's natural that Capitalism started with the industrial revolution which marks the beginning of humans evolving tech rapidly. It's almost as if it was inevitable once we reached that stage. To be against it is futile as it's as natural as gravity. And we just keep getting better at it.
maxwell 3y ago
He's just "hack[ing] something to [his] advantage." And pg was his enthusiastic Palpatine. Egging on and fawning over sama was already uncomfortable back in 2010. http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
- HellDunkel 3y ago
  Luckily, YC is experiencing a cultural shift. The likes of PG and Marc Andrewessen, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel were not frowned upon in 2010, not to mention Elon Musk or Zuckerberg.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Can you elaborate a bit more?
    - HellDunkel 3y ago
      I need to correct myself. It should have said Hackernews instead of YC. And it is really the comments here that reflect a cultural shift which i think is interesting.
  - maxwell 3y ago
    First, many of them sung a different tune when they were challenging power before becoming established power. Second, they weren't subject to much public scrutiny as they weren't yet household names until maybe the mid '10s when tech companies took over the market.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Huh? The current YC leadership is also wacked-out authoritarian far right wing
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
floydianspiral 3y ago
It's weird how much of that wiki article (and others I just looked up) trends towards right/alt-right extremism as I have never thought of accelerationism as something fascists would take to. My original understanding of it was that ai/tech will become so advanced that it will take over a lot of the production and labor we currently do to feed, build, and supply the world with resources and when that part is automated, humans would hopefully be freed up to do more with their life. This would have to involve restructuring money, society and how governments and resources are allocated. Ties to UBI and how much people get will have to be solved in a different way since we no longer need to do all the menial work. The time span between ai starting to be able to do all of this (maybe starting soon) and when we finally figure out we don't need to work for money is the terrible part where loss of jobs would eventually cause an upheaval and rethinking of how society needs to be structured and the acceleration that people talk about is trying to speed through this bad part as fast as possible to get to the other side as possible. I guess my idea of it is not at all what others seem to think though? I'm pretty pessimistic the "other side" will actually be a utopia but that would be up to the collective to figure out but it seems like a worthwhile concept on the surface.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Of course, one of the problems with the idea is that it endorses throwing innocent others under the economic bus. It's nice that they want to "speed through" that part -- but it still boils down to advocating harming people who aren't consenting in exchange for the possibility (not guarantee) of something better for later generations.
- dundarious 3y ago
  It's not weird at all if you're familiar with the history of the term, and the currents in mass politics of the 20th century. Everything from the German SDP's (left wing) acceptance of Hitler's rise to power with their quasi-accelerationist "first Hitler, then us" strategy, to the (right wing) OSS/CIA/fascist Strategy of Tension in Italy, to (right wing) boogaloo boys trying to incite race war, to (right wing) evangelical millenarianism around sparking war in Jerusalem to prompt coming of the antichrist. It does have its beginnings as a concept in Marxist writings. In a way, Marx himself was the first accelerationist (but he seems to have mostly abandoned that thinking towards the end of his life).
m-i-l 3y ago
I hope that the tech billionaires are simply blundering towards the destruction of society, rather than intentionally trying to do so with something like Effective Accelerationism. That would certainly fit with Hanlon's Razor. I have a simple theory that tech billionaires are at least partly influenced by the sci-fi of their youth. While some of the older tech billionaires were brought up on utopian sci-fi like Star Trek, with wonderful ideas like the post-scarcity economy, some of the younger tech billionaires were brought up on the dystopian sci-fi of the 1980s. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid.
- latexr 3y ago
  > Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid. Also known as the Torment Nexus. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I have felt this too. Young SV valley tech bros seem to be trying to build whatever they saw at the movies. This includes some movies with very bad outcomes unfortunately.

JohnFen 3y ago

Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system. I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.

idlewords 3y ago
Altman is proof that there is no IQ cap on human stupidity.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Altman's belief system is "I deserve more money and power", that simple. There's no generous interpretation of building a 25% pre-mine shitcoin, and hawking it to third world countries through sketchy contractors who are explicitly incentivized to collect biometrics from anyone they can, where the claimed purpose of said shitcoin isn't even a little bit implemented, especially all of this in light of your friend and business partner runs fucking Palentir
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  I think most billionaires have the belief system "I deserve more money and power and what's best for me is best for society".

hiatus 3y ago

Could you elaborate on which actions, investments, and marketing strategies led you to that belief?

morkalork 3y ago

I think he's just out of touch. Here's another example: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-ai-with-existential-risk-are-really-not-getting-oppenheimer https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-a...

gumballindie 3y ago
There is a certain degree of that for sure. These people really see themselves as “destroyers of worlds” when in fact they are becoming a but amusing in how they try to inflate their importance on the scene. But the sense of urgency cause by the supposed incoming terror, destitution, and despair seem to indicate these people would almost enjoy seeing it happen. Notice how their marketing doesnt focus as much on the benefits as it does on the drawbacks. It’s as if they _want_ the negatives to come to fruition and some sort of radical change to happen as a result of it. Maybe i am reading too much into it and giving sam and the other folks at openai too much credit, but the idea that they might be accelerationists is so crazy that it might actually be fact. Why else would you go above and beyond to build products that you yourself claim can be extremely harmful, they require radical change, other than you wanting for that negative outcome to happen so that you can achieve said change? Didnt the person say or write somewhere that he wants to solve inequality? And since ai would drastically increase inequality by extracting work from the masses and selling it for the profits of the few at massive scale doesnt it is logical to believe that he’a aiming to prove a point. Speeding things up, cause social upheaval, that leads to social change. The definition of that ideology.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It's something that I noticed a long time ago in various subcultures that focus on preparing for some variant of "end times". I think that if you've put a ton of time, money, and effort into preparing for a thing to happen, you begin to want that thing to happen (even if unconsciously). If it doesn't, then all that time, money, and effort was wasted.
  - mempko 3y ago

nkozyra 3y ago

It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.

gumballindie 3y ago
I get that, but it’s almost if someone’s trying to prove the point you just made.
amelius 3y ago
This is like saying that anything that can be hacked, should be hacked (instead of fixed).
nemo44x 3y ago
That's the main idea behind accelerationism from a Landian perspective. That capitalism is just getting started and that it's unstoppable and that it won't transition into socialisim like Marx predicted but rather will encompass more and more of everything and be the vehicle for the next evolution into a cybernetic species. It's the evolution of evolution and it's unstoppable. So get on with it and learn to love it. Quotes like "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" and Mark Fisher's (CCNU and Nick Land, etc)ideas around capitalism realism sort of sum it up.
- Nursie 3y ago
  I mean, it’s pretty easy to imagine capitalism precipitating the end of the world …
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    I don't see that per-se. I think it's more likely that capitalism continues to rapidly advance technology to the point where we truly do evolve evolution. So a certain part of the global population will have access to DNA synthesizers and other biotech and AI and can reproduce a master race of post-humans that will dominate and eventually annihilate Homosapiens. After a few generations of rapid improvement (a singularity where post-humans and AI merge into a single entity) they'll view the rest of the world as we view other primates today and won't have much use for them. If not through intentional genocide then just being unable to compete for ecosystem, etc. Homosapiens will fade away as Neanderthals did. Capitalism is a system (much more than just an economic system) that allows for selection like this. In a sense a type of market driven Darwinism which chooses how energy is spent developing the tools that allow humans to evolve rapidly into the next thing. That it's natural that Capitalism started with the industrial revolution which marks the beginning of humans evolving tech rapidly. It's almost as if it was inevitable once we reached that stage. To be against it is futile as it's as natural as gravity. And we just keep getting better at it.

maxwell 3y ago

He's just "hack[ing] something to [his] advantage." And pg was his enthusiastic Palpatine. Egging on and fawning over sama was already uncomfortable back in 2010. http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html

HellDunkel 3y ago
Luckily, YC is experiencing a cultural shift. The likes of PG and Marc Andrewessen, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel were not frowned upon in 2010, not to mention Elon Musk or Zuckerberg.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Can you elaborate a bit more?
  - HellDunkel 3y ago
    I need to correct myself. It should have said Hackernews instead of YC. And it is really the comments here that reflect a cultural shift which i think is interesting.
- maxwell 3y ago
  First, many of them sung a different tune when they were challenging power before becoming established power. Second, they weren't subject to much public scrutiny as they weren't yet household names until maybe the mid '10s when tech companies took over the market.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Huh? The current YC leadership is also wacked-out authoritarian far right wing

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

floydianspiral 3y ago

It's weird how much of that wiki article (and others I just looked up) trends towards right/alt-right extremism as I have never thought of accelerationism as something fascists would take to. My original understanding of it was that ai/tech will become so advanced that it will take over a lot of the production and labor we currently do to feed, build, and supply the world with resources and when that part is automated, humans would hopefully be freed up to do more with their life. This would have to involve restructuring money, society and how governments and resources are allocated. Ties to UBI and how much people get will have to be solved in a different way since we no longer need to do all the menial work. The time span between ai starting to be able to do all of this (maybe starting soon) and when we finally figure out we don't need to work for money is the terrible part where loss of jobs would eventually cause an upheaval and rethinking of how society needs to be structured and the acceleration that people talk about is trying to speed through this bad part as fast as possible to get to the other side as possible. I guess my idea of it is not at all what others seem to think though? I'm pretty pessimistic the "other side" will actually be a utopia but that would be up to the collective to figure out but it seems like a worthwhile concept on the surface.

JohnFen 3y ago
Of course, one of the problems with the idea is that it endorses throwing innocent others under the economic bus. It's nice that they want to "speed through" that part -- but it still boils down to advocating harming people who aren't consenting in exchange for the possibility (not guarantee) of something better for later generations.
dundarious 3y ago
It's not weird at all if you're familiar with the history of the term, and the currents in mass politics of the 20th century. Everything from the German SDP's (left wing) acceptance of Hitler's rise to power with their quasi-accelerationist "first Hitler, then us" strategy, to the (right wing) OSS/CIA/fascist Strategy of Tension in Italy, to (right wing) boogaloo boys trying to incite race war, to (right wing) evangelical millenarianism around sparking war in Jerusalem to prompt coming of the antichrist. It does have its beginnings as a concept in Marxist writings. In a way, Marx himself was the first accelerationist (but he seems to have mostly abandoned that thinking towards the end of his life).

m-i-l 3y ago

I hope that the tech billionaires are simply blundering towards the destruction of society, rather than intentionally trying to do so with something like Effective Accelerationism. That would certainly fit with Hanlon's Razor. I have a simple theory that tech billionaires are at least partly influenced by the sci-fi of their youth. While some of the older tech billionaires were brought up on utopian sci-fi like Star Trek, with wonderful ideas like the post-scarcity economy, some of the younger tech billionaires were brought up on the dystopian sci-fi of the 1980s. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid.

latexr 3y ago
> Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid. Also known as the Torment Nexus. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
ChatGTP 3y ago
I have felt this too. Young SV valley tech bros seem to be trying to build whatever they saw at the movies. This includes some movies with very bad outcomes unfortunately.