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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

#51

Post by atemerev »

bykovich2 wrote: post #45
atemerev wrote: post #36

Is there anybody here who _doesn't_ like technical progress and doesn't want it to go faster? We are still stuck on this little blue marble, with the entire Universe in our telescopes (hundreds of billions of galaxies, hundreds of billions stars in each), that we can see, but can't really visit. It almost maddens me. If we meatbags are too fragile to travel to stars, let's build immortal AIs who'll do it for us. I am…

I personally don't care about any of that. I'm not sure what I'd need to "escape" from. There's infinitely more than enough on Earth -- even a minute slice of Earth -- for one human qua human. Even the exploratory impulse you seem to be experiencing seems misaligned with your conclusion. There are places, people, cities, societies, continents, ocean floors, mountain peaks, unplumbed caves, blistered deserts, dark for…

Any place I can visit on Earth will be not so much different as a planet on Alpha Centauri. More unknowns. More information to process.

Another thing is potentiality. If I want, I can afford to go to any place on Earth (I have to save some money for, say, South Pole, but it is still possible). But I can't go beyond Solar System, ever. Maybe it is my character, but when I hear about something that I "can't" do, I become obsessed by it until I can, or at least I can chart a path to this, even potentially.

And it's not I am not trying. I lived (as a legal resident) in six different countries, and visited around 35 more. I saw dark forests, and volcanoes, and icebergs, and glaciers, and other natural wonders. I am not as proficient as some pro-grade travellers who visited every country on Earth, but I hope to see more.

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

#52

Post by ABCLAW »

atemerev wrote: post #44
ABCLAW wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there anybody here is who _doesn't_ like technical progress and doesn't want it to go faster? Sure. I am quite glad we stopped iterating on nuclear weapon designs and I am quite fine with the state of the art not obliterating entire continents yet. I'm also quite happy we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too. I think you are too. I like technical progress th…

> we stopped iterating on nuclear weapon designs We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov. > we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too. We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them. Say what you want about humanity, but 70+ years without a nuclear war is impressive, given our history.…

>We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov.

Relative investment and manpower on the issue has plummeted. I can't get into more specific details.

>We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them.

As the other commentator to the post makes very clear, the definition of 'progress' needs to be made clear. If it is increased understanding in a field of knowledge, then the statement I highlighted indicates you and I share the same viewpoint: maybe sometimes it is better to just stop learning more about a topic.

If the definition of progress is all increased understanding in a field of knowledge which is good, then progress is tautologically good.

Unfortunately, since the two definitions are similar, the term is very frequently used to launder advancements of their ethical consequences.

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

#53

Post by atemerev »

ABCLAW wrote: post #52
atemerev wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we stopped iterating on nuclear weapon designs We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov. > we haven't done the R&D and optimization to lower the cost for mass producing neutron bombs too. We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them. Say what you want about humanity, but 70+ years without a nuclear war is impressive, given our history.…

>We didn't. Los Alamos is pretty busy this time of year. So is Sarov. Relative investment and manpower on the issue has plummeted. I can't get into more specific details. >We had. And also, we were smart enough to put these papers on the shelf and not proceed with them. As the other commentator to the post makes very clear, the definition of 'progress' needs to be made clear. If it is increased understanding in a fie…

> Relative investment and manpower on the issue has plummeted. I can't get into more specific details.

I can. Of course it plummeted since the end of the Cold War, but it raised again in the last 3 years, for obvious reasons. The US is lagging behind (not for long), but other nuclear powers are frantically resuming relevant activities.

> maybe sometimes it is better to just stop learning more about a topic.

It isn't. Methods of learning might be unethical (and thus are not advisable to be pursued), but knowledge itself is beyond ethics.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

gt_ wrote: post #35

It's interesting seeing 'accelerationism' floating up to the hackernews crowd. Unfortunately, this article misses the lasting value of the theory in the arts where it flourishes as nothing short of an artistic movement. Accelerationism has only indirect relations to technology, intelligence, "progress" and is NOT to be mistaken for technological progress or "fast transhumanism" or "irresponsible transhumanism" or sin…

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by bykovich2 »

atemerev wrote: post #49
bykovich2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Progress is good" is an implicative tautology -- the seeming obviousness of the statement relies on the fact that the term "progress" strongly implies "betterness." And it is, in fact, its applicability to any state of affairs a matter of betterness -- but betterness of very specific, and often unspoken, types. "Technology progress" may mean "better technology" -- but it does /not/ necessarily mean "technology that…

Yes, not necessarily. Progress, in my opinion, is increasing efficiency in the modes of operation. Scaling-out. Space programs are progress. Modern warfare is not progress, it is, at best, self-defence and status quo preservation. I believe that intelligence rooted in biology is not the most efficient mode of operation.

How do you justify that definition of progress? And how do you draw a connection between "increasing efficiency in the modes of operation" and "good" (or even "desirable") -- if you do?

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

#56

Post by bykovich2 »

atemerev wrote: post #51
bykovich2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't care about any of that. I'm not sure what I'd need to "escape" from. There's infinitely more than enough on Earth -- even a minute slice of Earth -- for one human qua human. Even the exploratory impulse you seem to be experiencing seems misaligned with your conclusion. There are places, people, cities, societies, continents, ocean floors, mountain peaks, unplumbed caves, blistered deserts, dark for…

Any place I can visit on Earth will be not so much different as a planet on Alpha Centauri. More unknowns. More information to process. Another thing is potentiality. If I want, I can afford to go to any place on Earth (I have to save some money for, say, South Pole, but it is still possible). But I can't go beyond Solar System, ever. Maybe it is my character, but when I hear about something that I "can't" do, I beco…

I can appreciate that. I don't think that I'd agree with your conclusions, but I can understand the desire.

Here's another question: how does an immortal AI seeing Sirius thousands of years after your death help you with this at all? It seems entirely tangential to me.

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

#57

Post by uxp100 »

uxp100 wrote: post #28
mixedCase wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 na…

Well, I realize now that there is a leftism->Land connection mentioned in the article. I was too harsh. But I still think there us conflation going on.

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

#58

Post by AnimalMuppet »

goatlover wrote: post #26
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…

Seems to me that, while QM became "understood" in that period, the transistor was only discovered in the last year. All the applications of the transistor came in the latest 70 years.

There's also the discovery of the gene, and space travel. Those haven't transformed daily life as much as the inventions of the previous 70 years, but add in the transistor and it gets close...

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