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'e/acc' – Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs

25 points by otikik 3y ago

j0hnyl 3y ago
I find the e/acc ethos highly relatable for the simple reason that accelerating innovation inevitably means access to new technology becomes democratized quicker. Progress and technology only moves forward and this can't be avoided, but when we try to slow it down under false pretenses of "safety" all that means is that the disproportionately wealthy or powerful will have access to it. Accelerating technological progress means these amazing tools can get into the hands of the average person much quicker, and imo that's a good thing.
- 11101010001100 3y ago
  What evidence do you have of 'new technology becomes democratized quicker'? People mostly just use technology, but doesn't necessarily correspond to democratization (although the thought leaders would have you think otherwise).
  - olalonde 3y ago
    Democratization as in "the action of making something accessible to everyone", not the political system.
    - realce 3y ago
      They were not asking about a political system. They were asking about what democratization means in actuality - Does the "common man" get source code? Do they get to use the tech w/o interference by 3rd parties? Do they get to own the things they make with this tech? IMO e/acc is just the SV version of Manifest Destiny and it's a self-serving philosophy for people who stand to gain billions and insulate themselves from the downsides the common-man cannot. Democratization means all citizens experience that equally - the good and the bad - but is that what's happening here?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- fatherzine 3y ago
  "new technology is disseminated quicker" as in "microbial dissemination"
- tech_ken 3y ago
  IMO this is a super ahistorical and overly-simplified reading of technological development. For one, you're painting with an absurdly wide brush. For example: has the rapid development of missile technology "democratized access" to surface-to-air missiles? Obviously not. Technological development comes in many different flavors, and sometimes has nothing to do with "technology" at all (look at the development of push-button elevators). It's not really possible to make realistic statements about "technological development"; you have to apply some qualifications and context. Even when technology does get developed and shared among people quickly there's very, very good reasons we'd want to slow it down in the name of safety. Thalidomide anyone? What about chloroflurocarbons? I certainly agree that it's no good to keep technological power concentrated in the hands of the already-powerful, but to just claim that all efforts at promoting "safety" inevitability deepen inequality is facile. The "e/acc" way of thinking is (IMO) Whig history coming from a freshman engineering major.
  - igor47 3y ago
    Thanks for sanity. More broadly, concentration of power and unsafe technology are two different subjects -- we can and should tackle both.
    - tech_ken 3y ago
      Absolutely! And I do think that the relationship between technology and power is super interesting and worthy of consideration, but this approach to it is just....goofy.
  - joenot443 3y ago
    I think you're missing the forest for the trees (perhaps deliberately) if your immediate criticism of e/acc is that we don't have democratized access to surface-to-air missiles. Most people are able to understand what is broadly meant by "technological development". It normally means stuff like camera phones and internet access and hearing aids, you're the first I've read whose mind immediately jumps to weapons of destruction. If someone noted that they'd been impressed with the technological progress of the 2000s, I wouldn't personally feel the need to smugly clarify that they don't have access to missiles, so their point is misguided. Perhaps their comment would have been clearer to folks like you with the addition of more qualifications and context to describe _exactly what_ kinds of progress is being talked about, but personally I found it very clear. You're letting the political mask slip a bit with the inclusion of the Whig comment, by the way :)
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The democratization of technology can only happen if people broadly can afford the technology. Distributing the gains from technological progress isn't necessarily happening as a default/without effort. At the very least there is a question mark there (see, for example, Acemoglu's work).
pringk02 3y ago
Fascinating. You have to wonder if they are cognizant of the associations of the term "accelrationism" with the extremes of the political spectrum and signalling a dog-whistle for one or the other, or if they just think it sounds cool?
- nickpp 3y ago
  > associations of the term "accelrationism" with the extremes of the political spectrum Care to elaborate? I am completely unaware of these associations.
  - pringk02 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism Though it has left-wing and right-wing variants, accelerationism argues that one should double down on capitalisim in order to destroy it.
    - timmytokyo 3y ago
      The variant supported by most Silicon Valley types appears to be the right-wing one. Andreessen's "techno-optimist manifesto" cites Filippo Marinetti, founder of the Italian futurist and fascist movements, as one of its "patron saints". Also included: Nick Land, spiritual father of the "dark enlightenment" accelerationist philosophy known known as neoreaction.
      - malermeister 3y ago
        Most Silicon Valley VC types are poorly disguised crypto- (excuse the double entendre) fascists.
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      That was Marx's original theory - capitalism had to reach its full and complete development before it could transition into socialism. This is still understood in China as their rationale for supporting a market economy even in a supposedly 'socialist' country.
nickpp 3y ago
It's a simple but powerful idea: since any new tech comes with good and bad but overall there is more good than bad - we are better off accelerating adoption to outrun doomers who'd rather have the whole humankind stagnate than risk the potential bad.
- tech_ken 3y ago
  > but overall there is more good than bad This seems like an extremely dubious assumption, to me, especially given the extremity of the conclusions being placed upon it. Feels like a roulette player saying "well if I always double my previous bet then eventually I'll win back everything" and cracking open the family savings. Like in some extremely idealized version of the world what you're saying might make sense? But if you take even a cursory look at history it becomes abundantly clear (to me, at least) that the truth is more complicated.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    > extremely dubious assumption I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative. I agree, we could happen run across one in the future, but so far history is on our side. Also, don't forget that our species's default fate is dire. Statistically speaking our civilisation is highly likely to end where is began: on this planet. Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us.
    - tech_ken 3y ago
      > I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative. To start, I think it's extremely difficult (if even possible) to assign "scores" to the outcomes of all technologies ever developed in human history. IMPO to be able to accurately/productively say "oh this has been a net positive or negative for humanity" you have to have all of history written down to begin with, which is a tall order. Anything else requires you to impute some data, so already the assessment has error bars. Second, this is a massive survivor bias fallacy. Technologies with net negatives don't get promulgated precisely because we have a culture of safety and caution around technological development. If someone invents the InfantShredder 9000 it winds up sitting on the lab bench, because it would never in a million years get developed for serious release because it is unsafe. > but so far history is on our side. It is not, history is full of both blood and joy. That we haven't wiped out our species yet is an extremely low bar IMO. > Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us. My personal cosmology is that death is natural, normal, and good. "Dreading" it is as silly as dreading rain. Biological systems die and their components are reused by the ecosystem: this is reality. I recognize that not everyone is on board with this, and that it's kind of a religious/spiritual take, so I don't want to belabor a useless point too much, but I do think it's worth bringing up at least once. We should aggressively pursue every quality of life improvement we can find, absolutely I support this. But should we pretend like we can somehow escape the ultimate confines of being a biological organism? I think that's delusional and distracting, personally. Much like my views on the Christian Heaven, this glorious techno-future promised by Sandhill Road strikes me as bait to get rubes in-line, rather than an actual ethical north-star. My preference is to find joy in impermanence, and focus on maximizing the human experience now, rather than play utilitarian games about possible futures; "a bird in the hand" and all that.
EA-3167 3y ago
It strikes me as a deeply self-serving and poorly thought-out ideology. Technologists think that simply throwing more tech at every problem is the solution to everything? How is this not ad hoc justification at best, and "Hammer only sees nails" at worst?
- beardyw 3y ago
  Yes, I think "technological colonialism" would be a better term. We give these poor saps baubles and we get their riches.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    I vote technofeudalism. Yanis Varoufakis, who coined the term afaik, has some interesting thoughts on it (and even wrote a book). Here's a Guardian Article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-capitalism-ukraine-interview https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufak... > “Imagine the following scene straight out of the science fiction storybook,” he writes. “You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything looks normal. Until you begin to notice something odd. It turns out all the shops, indeed every building, belongs to a chap called Jeff. What’s more, everyone walks down different streets, and sees different stores because everything is intermediated by his algorithm… an algorithm that dances to Jeff’s tune.” > It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism. And us? We’re the serfs. “Cloud serfs”, so lacking in class consciousness that we don’t even realise that the tweeting and posting that we’re doing is actually building value in these companies.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      > Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues Maybe Varoufakis should try creating an Amazon instead of writing some book and running Greece’s economy into the ground. We are serfs for even commenting here, by the way. This site is owned (and created) by the technofeudalists who founded YC, not by Mr Varoufakis. So what brings you here, serf on their property, if you don’t see any value in it? They are certainly not putting a gun to your head just like Amazon is not making you shop there.
z7 3y ago
>Tan, who is Y Combinator's president, tweeted last week that "e/acc is not 'replace humans with robots'," instead it's a vision that believes "more tech means more humans, more prosperity, but also more AIs." Well, at least on this[0] site I'm reading: >We have no affinity for biological humans or even the human mind structure. We are posthumanists in the sense that we recognize the supremacy of higher forms of free energy accumulation over lesser forms of free energy accumulation. [0] https://effectiveacceleration.tech https://effectiveacceleration.tech
- realce 3y ago
  "e/acc is not an ideology. It is not a movement. It is simply an acknowledgement of truth." I'm pretty sure that's what totalitarian groups always say? It's not an opinion that your race is less than ours, it's a FACT. These people are mad.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    "I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology - makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament - when we are within ideology, is that - when we think that we escape it into our dreams - at that point we are within ideology." - Slavoj Zizek.
  - 5040 3y ago
    When someone treats a rhetorical flourish in an overly literal manner, is he deliberately misrepresenting a group he dislikes, or is it just a misreading?
    - realce 3y ago
      You think I'm treating the rhetoric of this borg manifesto too harshly?
- GTP 3y ago
  What does "free energy accumulation" mean? Is it just some intelligent-sounding term to refer to some physical thing/being?
feedforward 3y ago
Marc Andreessen wrote "It's time to build" in 2020 bemoaning that "we can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential - which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future." Then last year when plans were made for multi-family homes in Atherton, Andreessen and his wife sent out a letter that multi-family homes where he lives "will massively decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and immensely increase the noise pollution and traffic". Growth and "progress" when it's your environment and neighborhood being trampled on, government regulation and restraint when it comes to his neighborhood and property. We can take this "movement" with the hypocrisy it is wrapped in.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bko 3y ago
  What does this have to do with e/acc? Im very much in favor of yimby, but i understand personal preference as well. If someone in Venice Italy was against filling in canals, would you be similarly outraged? I think there's a balance between not making every neighborhood a densely populated cookie cutter multi family dwelling and endless zoning permits that require you to file with dozens of environmental agencies with dubious impacts on environment. But again, what does this have to do with e/acc or the article apart from being a lazy dunk on someone who has e/acc in their twitter profile
  - malermeister 3y ago
    You know where else is filled with densely populated multi family dwellings? Vienna. Paris. I don't know about you, but they definitely feel less cookie cutter than most of California to me.
    - greenie_beans 3y ago
      and vienna has cheap housing, thanks to their social housing
greenie_beans 3y ago
love how these SV dumbasses have adopted an ideology that's rooted in the goal to destroy capitalism.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  Makes sense when you realize that they are never loyal to capitalism, only to themselves, and their own wealth and power.
piva00 3y ago
This is a very interesting read to me, simply because the timing was perfect with my reading of "The Religion of Technology" by David Noble. In "The Religion of Technology" he argues that advancement through technology is completely meshed with religious myths (and not separated nor antithetical from religion), the redemption/salvation arc, attempting to become more divine through God-like powers we have gained through technology (nuclear weapons for destruction, AI for immortality). It's a very, very interesting book from 1999 which feels much more contemporary than that.
5040 3y ago
I'm confused at the overwhelming hostility on Hacker News, of all places. Don't you guys like technology? These guys are pushing back on outsiders setting arbitrary limits on technological progress. Do you guys really think American politicians are competent enough to micromanage the development of novel technologies?
- malermeister 3y ago
  I like technology. I don't like neofascists using it to further and further tighten their grip on power and undermine our democratic institutions.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    How exactly are “neofascists using technology to further and further tighten their grip on power and undermine our democratic institutions”?!
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Uber is fundamentally a technological way of circumventing labor protections. Airbnb, same thing, but instead manipulating housing stock, causing affordability crises around the world. Crypto is an attempt to take away monetary policy from democratically elected governments. Twitter is a billionaire's tool to amplify far-right voices while censoring anti-billionaire sentiment. These are just the most obvious examples. But it's not only my personal opinions - Andreessen recently wrote a manifesto in which he cited the co-author of the fascist manifesto as one of his "patron saints".
      - nickpp 3y ago
        None of your examples have anything to do with fascism. You sound like Putin saying Ukrainians are Nazi because they vote for the west, reject his occupation and fight for their land. What?!
        3y ago
johnnyworker 3y ago
I felt tempted to post these quotes in response to several comments I read there, but posting quotes is a bad way to discuss, and they're really long, so decided to post them as top-level comment, and general food for thought. > It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. > If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used. -- Joseph Weizenbaum > Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. -- Jean-Paul Marat
BenoitP 3y ago
I believe it comes at the exact time -and in opposition to- of the masses coming to terms with the climate change challenge. We have to transition away from fossil fuels, but they are so intertwined with our lives it also means strong degrowth (count the times transporting was necessary to your activity today, or the number of times you touched a plastic or steel item, or just consider half your nitrogen came from an industrial Haber process column) SV's philosophy is based on growth, and this is anathema. IMHO this is a half-conscious attempt to impose an alternative, or to shed future potential obligations. It feels like we're in a Greek tragedy: everyone plays the role one was made to honestly play, and that makes the catastrophe inevitable.
tech_ken 3y ago
I think it's funny how MA's original post focused so aggressively on "obstacles to progress" like safety regulation and sustainability concerns. It seems to me that the real obstacles to progress are the things that take up most peoples' time: work, paying bills, and getting educated. From where I'm standing the surest way to create a techno-renaissance would be to give people tons of free time and free education. The historical examples I'm aware of seem to indicate that when educated people have more time to recreate, they also have more time to innovate and invent. Weird how it's just the FDA or EPA that's the problem, and not all the pointless make-work that most people perform in order to pay rent and generate passive income for their employing corp's owners.
- janice1999 3y ago
  > "obstacles to progress" like safety regulation and sustainability concerns. If we were a bit more cynical perhaps we would more accurately call those "obstacles to unconstrained profit and power".
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Per HN's comment policy I try and only speak about what was directly, actually said. However it definitely seems to me like your phrasing fits the observed facts better than e/acc's own characterization of its motivations.
StorytellerCZ 3y ago
What I like about this and the Techno-Optimist manifesto is the optimistic vision. Something that I feel lacking in society at large. That said I find this naive and especially with e/acc extreme. Not all problems can be solved by technology or ought to be (either due to blowback or the cost to solve it is too large compare to other methods). One thing that rubs me especially the wrong way is that accelrationism and technology at all cost, even if we have to radically change the society. At this point technology becomes the master instead of the helper it is suppose to be.

25 points by otikik 3y ago

I find the e/acc ethos highly relatable for the simple reason that accelerating innovation inevitably means access to new technology becomes democratized quicker. Progress and technology only moves forward and this can't be avoided, but when we try to slow it down under false pretenses of "safety" all that means is that the disproportionately wealthy or powerful will have access to it. Accelerating technological progress means these amazing tools can get into the hands of the average person much quicker, and imo that's a good thing.

11101010001100 3y ago
What evidence do you have of 'new technology becomes democratized quicker'? People mostly just use technology, but doesn't necessarily correspond to democratization (although the thought leaders would have you think otherwise).
- olalonde 3y ago
  Democratization as in "the action of making something accessible to everyone", not the political system.
  - realce 3y ago
    They were not asking about a political system. They were asking about what democratization means in actuality - Does the "common man" get source code? Do they get to use the tech w/o interference by 3rd parties? Do they get to own the things they make with this tech? IMO e/acc is just the SV version of Manifest Destiny and it's a self-serving philosophy for people who stand to gain billions and insulate themselves from the downsides the common-man cannot. Democratization means all citizens experience that equally - the good and the bad - but is that what's happening here?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
fatherzine 3y ago
"new technology is disseminated quicker" as in "microbial dissemination"
tech_ken 3y ago
IMO this is a super ahistorical and overly-simplified reading of technological development. For one, you're painting with an absurdly wide brush. For example: has the rapid development of missile technology "democratized access" to surface-to-air missiles? Obviously not. Technological development comes in many different flavors, and sometimes has nothing to do with "technology" at all (look at the development of push-button elevators). It's not really possible to make realistic statements about "technological development"; you have to apply some qualifications and context. Even when technology does get developed and shared among people quickly there's very, very good reasons we'd want to slow it down in the name of safety. Thalidomide anyone? What about chloroflurocarbons? I certainly agree that it's no good to keep technological power concentrated in the hands of the already-powerful, but to just claim that all efforts at promoting "safety" inevitability deepen inequality is facile. The "e/acc" way of thinking is (IMO) Whig history coming from a freshman engineering major.
- igor47 3y ago
  Thanks for sanity. More broadly, concentration of power and unsafe technology are two different subjects -- we can and should tackle both.
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Absolutely! And I do think that the relationship between technology and power is super interesting and worthy of consideration, but this approach to it is just....goofy.
- joenot443 3y ago
  I think you're missing the forest for the trees (perhaps deliberately) if your immediate criticism of e/acc is that we don't have democratized access to surface-to-air missiles. Most people are able to understand what is broadly meant by "technological development". It normally means stuff like camera phones and internet access and hearing aids, you're the first I've read whose mind immediately jumps to weapons of destruction. If someone noted that they'd been impressed with the technological progress of the 2000s, I wouldn't personally feel the need to smugly clarify that they don't have access to missiles, so their point is misguided. Perhaps their comment would have been clearer to folks like you with the addition of more qualifications and context to describe _exactly what_ kinds of progress is being talked about, but personally I found it very clear. You're letting the political mask slip a bit with the inclusion of the Whig comment, by the way :)
RandomLensman 3y ago
The democratization of technology can only happen if people broadly can afford the technology. Distributing the gains from technological progress isn't necessarily happening as a default/without effort. At the very least there is a question mark there (see, for example, Acemoglu's work).

pringk02 3y ago

Fascinating. You have to wonder if they are cognizant of the associations of the term "accelrationism" with the extremes of the political spectrum and signalling a dog-whistle for one or the other, or if they just think it sounds cool?

nickpp 3y ago
> associations of the term "accelrationism" with the extremes of the political spectrum Care to elaborate? I am completely unaware of these associations.
- pringk02 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism Though it has left-wing and right-wing variants, accelerationism argues that one should double down on capitalisim in order to destroy it.
  - timmytokyo 3y ago
    The variant supported by most Silicon Valley types appears to be the right-wing one. Andreessen's "techno-optimist manifesto" cites Filippo Marinetti, founder of the Italian futurist and fascist movements, as one of its "patron saints". Also included: Nick Land, spiritual father of the "dark enlightenment" accelerationist philosophy known known as neoreaction.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Most Silicon Valley VC types are poorly disguised crypto- (excuse the double entendre) fascists.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    That was Marx's original theory - capitalism had to reach its full and complete development before it could transition into socialism. This is still understood in China as their rationale for supporting a market economy even in a supposedly 'socialist' country.

nickpp 3y ago

It's a simple but powerful idea: since any new tech comes with good and bad but overall there is more good than bad - we are better off accelerating adoption to outrun doomers who'd rather have the whole humankind stagnate than risk the potential bad.

tech_ken 3y ago
> but overall there is more good than bad This seems like an extremely dubious assumption, to me, especially given the extremity of the conclusions being placed upon it. Feels like a roulette player saying "well if I always double my previous bet then eventually I'll win back everything" and cracking open the family savings. Like in some extremely idealized version of the world what you're saying might make sense? But if you take even a cursory look at history it becomes abundantly clear (to me, at least) that the truth is more complicated.
- nickpp 3y ago
  > extremely dubious assumption I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative. I agree, we could happen run across one in the future, but so far history is on our side. Also, don't forget that our species's default fate is dire. Statistically speaking our civilisation is highly likely to end where is began: on this planet. Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us.
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    > I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative. To start, I think it's extremely difficult (if even possible) to assign "scores" to the outcomes of all technologies ever developed in human history. IMPO to be able to accurately/productively say "oh this has been a net positive or negative for humanity" you have to have all of history written down to begin with, which is a tall order. Anything else requires you to impute some data, so already the assessment has error bars. Second, this is a massive survivor bias fallacy. Technologies with net negatives don't get promulgated precisely because we have a culture of safety and caution around technological development. If someone invents the InfantShredder 9000 it winds up sitting on the lab bench, because it would never in a million years get developed for serious release because it is unsafe. > but so far history is on our side. It is not, history is full of both blood and joy. That we haven't wiped out our species yet is an extremely low bar IMO. > Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us. My personal cosmology is that death is natural, normal, and good. "Dreading" it is as silly as dreading rain. Biological systems die and their components are reused by the ecosystem: this is reality. I recognize that not everyone is on board with this, and that it's kind of a religious/spiritual take, so I don't want to belabor a useless point too much, but I do think it's worth bringing up at least once. We should aggressively pursue every quality of life improvement we can find, absolutely I support this. But should we pretend like we can somehow escape the ultimate confines of being a biological organism? I think that's delusional and distracting, personally. Much like my views on the Christian Heaven, this glorious techno-future promised by Sandhill Road strikes me as bait to get rubes in-line, rather than an actual ethical north-star. My preference is to find joy in impermanence, and focus on maximizing the human experience now, rather than play utilitarian games about possible futures; "a bird in the hand" and all that.

EA-3167 3y ago

It strikes me as a deeply self-serving and poorly thought-out ideology. Technologists think that simply throwing more tech at every problem is the solution to everything? How is this not ad hoc justification at best, and "Hammer only sees nails" at worst?

beardyw 3y ago
Yes, I think "technological colonialism" would be a better term. We give these poor saps baubles and we get their riches.
- malermeister 3y ago
  I vote technofeudalism. Yanis Varoufakis, who coined the term afaik, has some interesting thoughts on it (and even wrote a book). Here's a Guardian Article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-capitalism-ukraine-interview https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufak... > “Imagine the following scene straight out of the science fiction storybook,” he writes. “You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything looks normal. Until you begin to notice something odd. It turns out all the shops, indeed every building, belongs to a chap called Jeff. What’s more, everyone walks down different streets, and sees different stores because everything is intermediated by his algorithm… an algorithm that dances to Jeff’s tune.” > It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism. And us? We’re the serfs. “Cloud serfs”, so lacking in class consciousness that we don’t even realise that the tweeting and posting that we’re doing is actually building value in these companies.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    > Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues Maybe Varoufakis should try creating an Amazon instead of writing some book and running Greece’s economy into the ground. We are serfs for even commenting here, by the way. This site is owned (and created) by the technofeudalists who founded YC, not by Mr Varoufakis. So what brings you here, serf on their property, if you don’t see any value in it? They are certainly not putting a gun to your head just like Amazon is not making you shop there.

z7 3y ago

>Tan, who is Y Combinator's president, tweeted last week that "e/acc is not 'replace humans with robots'," instead it's a vision that believes "more tech means more humans, more prosperity, but also more AIs." Well, at least on this[0] site I'm reading: >We have no affinity for biological humans or even the human mind structure. We are posthumanists in the sense that we recognize the supremacy of higher forms of free energy accumulation over lesser forms of free energy accumulation. [0] https://effectiveacceleration.tech https://effectiveacceleration.tech

realce 3y ago
"e/acc is not an ideology. It is not a movement. It is simply an acknowledgement of truth." I'm pretty sure that's what totalitarian groups always say? It's not an opinion that your race is less than ours, it's a FACT. These people are mad.
- malermeister 3y ago
  "I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology - makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament - when we are within ideology, is that - when we think that we escape it into our dreams - at that point we are within ideology." - Slavoj Zizek.
- 5040 3y ago
  When someone treats a rhetorical flourish in an overly literal manner, is he deliberately misrepresenting a group he dislikes, or is it just a misreading?
  - realce 3y ago
    You think I'm treating the rhetoric of this borg manifesto too harshly?
GTP 3y ago
What does "free energy accumulation" mean? Is it just some intelligent-sounding term to refer to some physical thing/being?

feedforward 3y ago

Marc Andreessen wrote "It's time to build" in 2020 bemoaning that "we can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential - which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future." Then last year when plans were made for multi-family homes in Atherton, Andreessen and his wife sent out a letter that multi-family homes where he lives "will massively decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and immensely increase the noise pollution and traffic". Growth and "progress" when it's your environment and neighborhood being trampled on, government regulation and restraint when it comes to his neighborhood and property. We can take this "movement" with the hypocrisy it is wrapped in.

deleted 3y ago
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bko 3y ago
What does this have to do with e/acc? Im very much in favor of yimby, but i understand personal preference as well. If someone in Venice Italy was against filling in canals, would you be similarly outraged? I think there's a balance between not making every neighborhood a densely populated cookie cutter multi family dwelling and endless zoning permits that require you to file with dozens of environmental agencies with dubious impacts on environment. But again, what does this have to do with e/acc or the article apart from being a lazy dunk on someone who has e/acc in their twitter profile
- malermeister 3y ago
  You know where else is filled with densely populated multi family dwellings? Vienna. Paris. I don't know about you, but they definitely feel less cookie cutter than most of California to me.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    and vienna has cheap housing, thanks to their social housing

greenie_beans 3y ago

love how these SV dumbasses have adopted an ideology that's rooted in the goal to destroy capitalism.

the_only_law 3y ago
Makes sense when you realize that they are never loyal to capitalism, only to themselves, and their own wealth and power.

piva00 3y ago

This is a very interesting read to me, simply because the timing was perfect with my reading of "The Religion of Technology" by David Noble. In "The Religion of Technology" he argues that advancement through technology is completely meshed with religious myths (and not separated nor antithetical from religion), the redemption/salvation arc, attempting to become more divine through God-like powers we have gained through technology (nuclear weapons for destruction, AI for immortality). It's a very, very interesting book from 1999 which feels much more contemporary than that.

5040 3y ago

I'm confused at the overwhelming hostility on Hacker News, of all places. Don't you guys like technology? These guys are pushing back on outsiders setting arbitrary limits on technological progress. Do you guys really think American politicians are competent enough to micromanage the development of novel technologies?

malermeister 3y ago
I like technology. I don't like neofascists using it to further and further tighten their grip on power and undermine our democratic institutions.
- nickpp 3y ago
  How exactly are “neofascists using technology to further and further tighten their grip on power and undermine our democratic institutions”?!
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Uber is fundamentally a technological way of circumventing labor protections. Airbnb, same thing, but instead manipulating housing stock, causing affordability crises around the world. Crypto is an attempt to take away monetary policy from democratically elected governments. Twitter is a billionaire's tool to amplify far-right voices while censoring anti-billionaire sentiment. These are just the most obvious examples. But it's not only my personal opinions - Andreessen recently wrote a manifesto in which he cited the co-author of the fascist manifesto as one of his "patron saints".
    - nickpp 3y ago
      None of your examples have anything to do with fascism. You sound like Putin saying Ukrainians are Nazi because they vote for the west, reject his occupation and fight for their land. What?!
      - 3y ago

johnnyworker 3y ago

I felt tempted to post these quotes in response to several comments I read there, but posting quotes is a bad way to discuss, and they're really long, so decided to post them as top-level comment, and general food for thought. > It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. > If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used. -- Joseph Weizenbaum > Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. -- Jean-Paul Marat

BenoitP 3y ago

I believe it comes at the exact time -and in opposition to- of the masses coming to terms with the climate change challenge. We have to transition away from fossil fuels, but they are so intertwined with our lives it also means strong degrowth (count the times transporting was necessary to your activity today, or the number of times you touched a plastic or steel item, or just consider half your nitrogen came from an industrial Haber process column) SV's philosophy is based on growth, and this is anathema. IMHO this is a half-conscious attempt to impose an alternative, or to shed future potential obligations. It feels like we're in a Greek tragedy: everyone plays the role one was made to honestly play, and that makes the catastrophe inevitable.

tech_ken 3y ago

I think it's funny how MA's original post focused so aggressively on "obstacles to progress" like safety regulation and sustainability concerns. It seems to me that the real obstacles to progress are the things that take up most peoples' time: work, paying bills, and getting educated. From where I'm standing the surest way to create a techno-renaissance would be to give people tons of free time and free education. The historical examples I'm aware of seem to indicate that when educated people have more time to recreate, they also have more time to innovate and invent. Weird how it's just the FDA or EPA that's the problem, and not all the pointless make-work that most people perform in order to pay rent and generate passive income for their employing corp's owners.

janice1999 3y ago
> "obstacles to progress" like safety regulation and sustainability concerns. If we were a bit more cynical perhaps we would more accurately call those "obstacles to unconstrained profit and power".
- tech_ken 3y ago
  Per HN's comment policy I try and only speak about what was directly, actually said. However it definitely seems to me like your phrasing fits the observed facts better than e/acc's own characterization of its motivations.

StorytellerCZ 3y ago

What I like about this and the Techno-Optimist manifesto is the optimistic vision. Something that I feel lacking in society at large. That said I find this naive and especially with e/acc extreme. Not all problems can be solved by technology or ought to be (either due to blowback or the cost to solve it is too large compare to other methods). One thing that rubs me especially the wrong way is that accelrationism and technology at all cost, even if we have to radically change the society. At this point technology becomes the master instead of the helper it is suppose to be.