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Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

theguardian.com

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Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#21

Post by defen »

aerodeck wrote: post #18
defen wrote: post #11

If I were to give my own tl;dr summary of accelerationism, I would say that they treat intelligence as the "good" of utmost value. In the accelerationist vision of the world, intelligence is a feature of the universe, a sort of higher-level organizing principle, and we should strive to maximize intelligence in whatever form. Accelerationists would be perfectly content with a world of ever more intelligent self-replic…

I think this is more or less correct, but I think the more important take-away from the article is how this kind of thinking ends up getting wrapped up in NRx and inevitably, the alt-right. Viewed from 1,000 ft, it is very easy to coldly construe our weird political landscape as a fulfillment of this hyper-rationalist dream: the irrationalities of the poor and uneducated are something to be corraled by the cold and c…

> Accelerationism is interesting to me insofar as it is transparent about the fact that technology is an a-human (not in-human) force.

I think that's a really good, pithy way of phrasing it.

> this kind of thinking ends up getting wrapped up in NRx and inevitably, the alt-right.

I would say that accelerationists are very closely aligned with NRx, and only tactically allied with the alt-right. I would say only tactically aligned with the alt-right because they view the alt-right as "identity politics for white people", which is fine insofar as it restricts immigration (because most of the immigrants coming to the US come from cultures that do not value personal liberty as highly as Anglosphere culture does; and do not have mean IQs as high as US whites); but the NRx and accelerationist ideal is to take all (and only) the smart people regardless of race and build a techcomm utopia.

NRx / acclerationist immigration policy would probably require scoring at least 130 on an IQ test.

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#22

Post by ue_ »

WaxProlix wrote: post #5
mixedCase wrote: post #2

TL;DR: It's just communism by another name.

Not quite what the article talks about, but Accelerationism in communist/anarchist thought is the notion that you either permit capitalism to go off the rails without hindering it or even encourage it actively. The goal is to "show it for what it really is" and make things so unpalatable that a worker uprising is inevitable (or at least more likely). So in that view, an accelerationist could be a socialist who oppose…

I am a Socialist myself and I often talk with people who are accelerationists; I am divided on the issue personally. Accelerationism in the Communist sphere tends to align itself with policies against working within the democratic system to improve conditions, as you noticed even to reject social democratic policies. The other argument for this from their point of view is that it would encourage complacency of the workers to be having these social democratic policies, as some view Keynesianism did to the Western capitalist nations.

An interesting point here is about Marx himself; he wrote:

"Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a means of establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there is already more or less dependence upon free trade. Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free competition within a country. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute government, as a means for the concentration of its own powers and for the realization of free trade within the same country.

"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." (Emphasis mine)

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#23

Post by accountyaccount »

aerodeck wrote: post #19
accountyaccount wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I was kind of on the "Ai is scary" train, but as I read into accelerationism more I've grown to accept that maybe it's ok if humans eventually become obsolete. It almost seems right.

Anti-humanism is a very interesting strain of thought these days. Homo-Deus by Harari is my favorite example. The problem, of course, is that if we got where we are now by being humans, then how do we know we're far enough along to 'quit' being humans without going backwards? How do you know that 'giving up' isn't the same sort of intellectual trick that that Nazis played on themselves? How do you give up without giv…

Ideally you create something that simply decides for you. If some human-created form of intelligence can best humanity through the lens of blind progression, then who are we to say?

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#24

Post by ue_ »

defen wrote: post #6
mixedCase wrote: post #2

TL;DR: It's just communism by another name.

I was wondering if you could expand on this. It seems like a comment someone would make if they are either entirely unfamiliar with accelerationism, or if they have a deep understanding of it - I'm curious if you fall into either of those camps :) The reason I say that is that Land claims to be utterly opposed to communism - his favorite suggestion is that communists should be dropped out of helicopters into the ocea…

> his favorite suggestion is that communists should be dropped out of helicopters into the ocean (cf Pinochet).

Very frighteningly, I see this suggestion echoed around seemingly seriously by certain groups of libertarians, especially on Reddit, and those libertarians on the "alt-right".

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#25

Post by fnovd »

aerodeck wrote: post #19
accountyaccount wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I was kind of on the "Ai is scary" train, but as I read into accelerationism more I've grown to accept that maybe it's ok if humans eventually become obsolete. It almost seems right.

Anti-humanism is a very interesting strain of thought these days. Homo-Deus by Harari is my favorite example. The problem, of course, is that if we got where we are now by being humans, then how do we know we're far enough along to 'quit' being humans without going backwards? How do you know that 'giving up' isn't the same sort of intellectual trick that that Nazis played on themselves? How do you give up without giv…

We don't have to give up being human. The cells in our body haven't changed drastically in the past few millennia. They perform a necessary function and are given the energy they need, in some convoluted way no cell need understand, by the conglomeration of "the body". In today's world, humans have a similar relationship to our societies/governments. I view accelerationism as augmenting our "higher-order" entities with AI, not replacing humans themselves. We, as socities/culture/nations are merely adapting new cells...

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#26

Post by goatlover »

mannigfaltig wrote: post #12

There is always a fringe philosophy that had it right.

Are they right in this case? I see the previous 70 years (1877-1947) as having more fundamental change than the last 70. It's hard to top electricity, automobiles, aircraft, penicillin, vaccinations, refrigeration, radio, tv, QM & Relativity as fundamentally transformative. Also, two world wars transforming the political map and doing away with the dynastic empires of the past.

If you define the singularity as being unable to predict the future, then I would say that period of time would have been less predictable than any other time in human history.

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#27

Post by aerodeck »

accountyaccount wrote: post #23
aerodeck wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-humanism is a very interesting strain of thought these days. Homo-Deus by Harari is my favorite example. The problem, of course, is that if we got where we are now by being humans, then how do we know we're far enough along to 'quit' being humans without going backwards? How do you know that 'giving up' isn't the same sort of intellectual trick that that Nazis played on themselves? How do you give up without giv…

Ideally you create something that simply decides for you. If some human-created form of intelligence can best humanity through the lens of blind progression, then who are we to say?

> lens of blind progression

The problem is that there is no such thing as 'blind progression'. It will always be defined by someone or something, boxing all future progress into that person's biases. This is the same well-intentioned by inherently flawed utopian thinking as everyone else.

I would totally sign my life away to an AI as long as no one was telling me that it was a sign of 'progress'. At the very least, no one should be profiting from it

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#28

Post by uxp100 »

mixedCase wrote: post #20
jressey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read it. It is really complex and actually hypercapitalistic, and nationalistic in its basic form. It advocates for advancement of their perception of humanity over all else. The newest iteration even advocates for independent, authoritative nation states! I concede the article also discusses a branch that goes left, and yes it is probably closest to social democracy.

From the article: "Accelerationism, therefore, goes against conservatism, traditional socialism, social democracy, environmentalism, protectionism, populism, nationalism, localism and all the other ideologies that have sought to moderate or reverse the already hugely disruptive, seemingly runaway pace of change in the modern world." My notion of accelerationism before this article was "communists, disappointed after…

I think there are at least 3 different meanings of acceleration-ism, and you are conflating some of them.

But the article is too, and once I read the article I started to as well.

Is there hard evidence of an intellectual connection between Zelazny, Land, and Leftist Accelerationism? This kinda feels like left-anarchism vs right-anarchism all over again. Wildly different ideologies that share very little, except a name. I would think the leftist variant predates the 60s, ue_ in response to you found elements of it in Marx.

Maybe this is a bad article.

Re: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in

#30

Post by naravara »

ue_ wrote: post #22
WaxProlix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite what the article talks about, but Accelerationism in communist/anarchist thought is the notion that you either permit capitalism to go off the rails without hindering it or even encourage it actively. The goal is to "show it for what it really is" and make things so unpalatable that a worker uprising is inevitable (or at least more likely). So in that view, an accelerationist could be a socialist who oppose…

I am a Socialist myself and I often talk with people who are accelerationists; I am divided on the issue personally. Accelerationism in the Communist sphere tends to align itself with policies against working within the democratic system to improve conditions, as you noticed even to reject social democratic policies. The other argument for this from their point of view is that it would encourage complacency of the wo…

>I am a Socialist myself and I often talk with people who are accelerationists; I am divided on the issue personally.

By the time working people are miserable enough to unite and rebel it will already be too late. The rich and powerful will have the logistics and technology on their side to quash any rebellion handily. Social Democracy is the only way forward. The people on the bottom need to have the capacity to resist and you can only do that by keeping the relative power of each segment of society at rough parity so nobody can exercise dominance over another.

The trouble with an accelerationist viewpoint is that even if the system collapses what comes out of the ashes won't be enlightened advancement and revolution, it will be a general regression into warlordism and feudalism. Even if Lefties win those fights you won't get anything like a Socialist society on the other side of it. The skill sets and temperament required to consolidate power among sociopathic warlords are not the skills sets or temperament you need to establish a just and egalitarian society. Quite the opposite, as you see by any country where communist insurgencies actually wind up in charge.

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