this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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A lot of the "elites" (OpenAI board, Thiel, Andreessen, etc) are on the effective-accelerationism grift now. The idea is to disregard all negative effects of pursuing technological "progress," because techno-capitalism will solve all problems. They support burning fossil fuels as fast as possible because that will enable "progress," which will solve climate change (through geoengineering, presumably). I've seen some accelerationists write that it would be ok if AI destroys humanity, because it would be the next evolution of "intelligence." I dunno if they've fallen for their own grift or not, but it's obviously a very convenient belief for them.
Effective-accelerationism was first coined by Nick Land, who appears to be some kind of fascist.
The problem with this approach is that progress here is viewed like a brick wall you build.
You don't get progress from just burning a lot of wood in 1400s. You can get it if that wood is burnt with the goal of, I dunno, making better metal or bricks for some specific mechanism.
Same with our time, how can they expect solutions of problems to be found when they don't understand what they are trying to find?
It's like a cargo cult - "white people had this thing and it could fly and drop cargo, so we must reproduce its shape and we'll be rich", only in this case it's even dumber - nobody has seen the things they are trying to reach anywhere outside of space opera series.
What differentiates IT from most other engineering areas is that most of people doing it solve abstract tasks in abstract environments, defined by social and market demand. They are, sadly, simply a grade below real engineers and scientists for that reason alone.