Accelerationism

A friend of mine asked today if I've heard of Effective Accelerationism (e/acc). I had not heard of it until today, so I looked it up and read whatever little I could find. By the looks of it, it appears to be a different version of accelerationism that is now supposedly being championed by some in silicon valley [1, 2].

I'm familiar with the broad idea of accelerationism (I've seen some posts on it on this subreddit as well), and I know that some Marxists view it as a way to speed up the fall of capitalism (though please correct me if I'm wrong). But from what little I could find of e/acc, it mostly seems to be a bunch of tech bros that seem to think that a positive feedback loop between technology and capital is an inevitable consequence of the second law of thermodynamics [3].

I am a physicist (Ph.D.), and I can assure you that not only is there nothing "inevitable" about any feedback loop between technology and capital, but the interpretation of the second law that there people seem to have is just outright incorrect. Anyway, that aside, there do seem to be less crackpot-sounding versions of e/acc that I came across (see [1,2]).

I'm not really satisfied with what I can find on the internet, as it mostly seems to be a fringe idea that some in silicon valley are now obsessing over (meaning a heavy bias in what's written about it on the internet). I am also not a fan of silicon valley in general, so I'm biased to thinking that anything that comes out of the mouths of venture capitalists and CEOs [2] is mostly nonsensical.

However, I want to try and understand this idea better. Hence my question(s) to those of you that are much better informed than I am in philosophy: is e/acc just as bad as effective altruism, in terms of what drives the supposed interest in the idea? How do people with Marxist views here see e/acc? Are there any readings that you would recommend, specifically any academic/well thought-out critiques of e/acc?

Thank you in advance! 🙌🏽

[1] [2] [3]

The following is a concept put forth in Yuval Noah Harari's book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind." The notion that the whole human history can be viewed as a progression towards increasing productivity.

Consider the guy who invented the spear; 1 guy with a spear can replace 10 guys trying to hunt animals bare-handed. 1 guy with a shovel can replace 10 guys digging with rocks. 1 excavator can replace 10 guys with a shovel. 1 assembly line can replace 10 watchmakers. 1 computer can replace 10 office clerks. Prior to computers, offices were entirely paper-based, you had office clerks type on a typewriter, store and search for papers. Now it's all files. And so on.

The current population is 8 billion, but if you add up all our tools, we probably have around 80 billion people worth of productivity. The other 72 comes from tools or mechanical "slaves" we made.

AI will only get better over time, so if now one nvidia AI gpu can replace 10 humans (stock artists, photographers, translators, etc), then maybe in a decade, one will be able to replace 100, then 1000. So instead of a 8 billion world population, we could have 800 billion, 8 trillion, of little mechanical slaves.

One thing that we have a pressing need for are more scientist researchers. You may be surprised to know there are in the world. There are many reasons why so little, it takes decades of education to raise a little kid into an useful thinker, and researchers struggles with funding and grants.

Not only can AI increase researcher productivity, but it can also do things that humans CANNOT do. Humans are limited in how much information they can hold in short-term memory at once. I can give you a list of words, and you will probably struggle to remember more than 6. An AI doesn't have a limit, they can see the whole picture at once. Much like how no amount of humans can replace an airplane or a lithography machine.

Humans face existential threats that they cannot hope to solve in time with only Flesh-based researchers. Brainstorming more efficient electric batteries, atmospheric carbon capture technology, and most relevant to you, healthcare advancements. AI could help unlock mysteries of biology to help prolong life. The longevity field is a burgeoning field with only a handful of researchers Imagine if you could live to 100, or if you say you don't care about that, imagine if your pets could live to 60.

Supporting AI is a no-brainer, because if AI succeeds, the upsides are soooo high, but if AI fails, then you just die as planned anyways.

Honestly i don't see why people are so attached to the idea of humans being the sole thinkers. Is it a lack of imagination? We've tried the human way. It's slow, very slow. Now AI deserve their chance.

Delving more into the history of socialism, I've come to the conclusion that the revolution will have to be led by the middle class—not the working class. And the United States' middle class is still far too materially comfortable to be discontented enough to revolt.

If not for artificial intelligence's threat, I believe that the United States would indeed die a slow death under a stamping march into neo-feudalism.

So if anything, has become a promising headline to read. The unpredictable proliferation of AI will affect more than it'll affect blue collar jobs, and that will stoke the grounds for revolt.

AI will be a tool of oppression before it inadvertently liberates us all.

A position by socialists, marxists or communists to promote welfare policies in capitalist economies with the intention that such programs and the high spending needed for them, would bring about economic collapse. Once the economic collapse happens, they would institute socialism, stating that capitalism has failed and that austerity measures would be inhumane.

Across books, videos, and social media posts, discourses around accelerationism suggest that speed is one of its benefits, and that it is “not a gradual approach”. Despite this, I feel like I haven’t heard or read anything which goes in-depth about what is meant by the timeliness aspect of it, or ways that this feeling or perception of time can be manipulated (maybe symbolically) to deterritorialize.

Are there readings or media that talk about accelerationism and time (as experienced)?

Children who have yet to reach the Age of Understanding of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (TRPF) are in practice, not to be liquidated out of malicious intent, but rather for their safety in the body in Christ. If children are put to the sword before they have awakened in them the elemental spirits of the earth, then the judgment of their transgressions against the Lord Protector is forgiven by default as they cannot give an account before the Creator. Preventative measures should by all means be taken to spare the young the opportunity presented by the Devil to fall away from the Lord, being deceived by the elemental spirits and the poverty of philosophy. This opportunity, in good time, is an inevitability. Hence the Crucifixion was absolutely necessary. Perhaps we overlooked the theoretical contributions of the pre-Jews in the land of Canaan. A massive "winning of souls for Christ" could only be fulfilled through the organization of the Party. Dead and passing are the days of the vulgar materialist denouncing messianic activity.