21–30 of 414 posts
Reminds me of the spirit of "Data for Good", which has become a whitewashed phrase to avoid ethical scrutiny (see: shotspotter, Wejo, palantir)
I guess some people have an inherent inability to adopt some kind of middle ground stance. It's either exponential growth forever and colonizing Mars or "why do you want to drag us back to the caves". Having a conversation for the 1000th time with such people who don't recognize nuance is very tiresome and not worth it.
Try "almost all people". People crave certainty.
Really more of an e/acc manifesto. Interesting to see a twitter thing slowly leak into the mainstream one step at a time.
WTF is e/acc for people that don't live on Twitter?
[0] https://www.effectiveacceleration.org/posts/4LtypqdAmQ3AgKtJ...
> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon'…
That's an anonymous Twitter/X account @BasedBeffJezos not the actual head Jeff himself.
Founder(?) of the e/acc philosophy
We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more.
Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the first ten thousand or so years has been the improvement of the human race and to win in the struggle to survive. Those were definitely noble goals. Compare that to the past 200 or so years and much of the progress has been about the consolidation of power and wealth in the hands of a few extraordinarily rich people. The technological gains have been spread widely, sure, but they've come at a high cost. That's different to the past where the gains have come with very little cost.
We could transform society to benefit everyone using technology if we wanted to. I suspect we won't though. We'll sell a few AI powered gadgets to the masses, and that will cause power over everyone to coalesce in the hands of a few people. That's not really much of a win.
It also presents the usual contradiction that any neo-liberal argument is "not a political argument". The author states :
> Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy.
Then proceeds to glorify the techno-capital (their term) and shun communism. How is that not political ?
While I do like technology and optimism, I prefer a more honest view. I think I'm glad this manifest exists: I disagree with almost every item of the list, but it's useful as a reference of the views of rich techno-advocates capitalist and everything wrong with it.
I was a huge techno-optimist in the late 90s and early 00s. If anything, my opinion has totally switched over the past 10-15 years as I increasingly see technology ripping societies apart, and benefits only accruing to those at the very top. So excuse me if I gag a bit from a post from newly minted billionaires saying how those crowing about the downsides of tech are just a bunch of Debbie Downers.
Tristan Harris, who was featured a lot in The Social Dilemma documentary, was on Bill Maher recently, and I totally agreed with this point he made: we have to forget all the optimistic stories we tell ourselves about tech, and instead just look at the incentives. With social media, we told ourselves all these stories about how it would bring us closer together and keep us better in touch with friends. But the financial incentives that exist for social media companies is solely based on stealing more and more of your attention: what keeps you scrolling to the next block. And it turns out nothing grabs attention like outrage. Tristan's point was that with newer tech like AI, we're likely to repeat the same mistakes if we just tell ourselves the same stories about all the good that can come from AI and ignore the incentives of those top companies speeding ahead as fast as they can. And if you look at those incentives, I don't think it bodes well for the rest of the 99.9% who won't control major AI systems.
> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon'…
Sigh, sad b/c I actually know this, but just a small correction. That's an anonymous Twitter/X account @BasedBeffJezos not the actual head Jeff himself. Founder(?) of the e/acc philosophy
I'm pretty anti-pessimist so many of these things appeal to me. Ultimately, though, it's hard to care that much because I know that Marc Andreessen is just content marketing here.
His efforts to literally stop building homes in his town after publishing a work titled "It's time to build" really tarnishes everything he says and makes it obvious he's a bullshitter.