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-replicating machines taking over the universe, without regard to human life or happiness. After all, Nick Land's personal motto is "Coldness be my God"
Everything else is what you get when you take "maximize intelligence" to its logical conclusion.
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 calculating. It's the sort of thinking popular with plutocrats, since it rationalizes their actions.
Accelerationism is interesting to me insofar as it is transparent about the fact that technology is an a-human (not in-human) force. Blind faith in the liberational potential of technology does nothing to actually fulfill this potential, but instead just furthers it's a-human qualities. The reference to the California ideology is apt.
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.
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 giving up?
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...
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?
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
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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-replicating machines taking over the universe, without regard to human life or happiness. After all, Nick Land's personal motto is "Coldness be my God"
Everything else is what you get when you take "maximize intelligence" to its logical conclusion.
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 calculating. It's the sort of thinking popular with plutocrats, since it rationalizes their actions.
Accelerationism is interesting to me insofar as it is transparent about the fact that technology is an a-human (not in-human) force. Blind faith in the liberational potential of technology does nothing to actually fulfill this potential, but instead just furthers it's a-human qualities. The reference to the California ideology is apt.
I think that's a really good, pithy way of phrasing it.
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.
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 giving up?
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...
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?
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