Warning: this post is polemical, philippic, and — at times — even facetious. Handle as such.
I have framed my response to Marc Andreessen’s “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” as a dialogue. Direct quotes from the manifesto are in italics; my responses follow in normal typescript.
We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature…
From what progenitor did we receive such a priori birthright? I doubt you’d say God, but if you did, I deny the idea that this birthright is summarized as “control.”
Our civilization was built on technology. Our civilization is built on technology.
A line from R.S. Thomas: “statesmen / And scientists with their hands full / Of the gifts that destroy.”
I am here to bring the good news.
He bears nothing less than a gospel, a good news for the salvation of all who believe.
Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.
Societies must act like sharks? Predatory and violent?
We believe everything good is downstream of growth.
The mantra of cancerous cells.
There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology.
This reduction borders the absurd.
We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less.
May we never, under any circumstance, say we have enough with enough.
We believe this is why our descendents will live in the stars.
Don’t be misled. These are not the stars of the Greek kosmos, replete with meaning and divinity. These are the cold stars of positivism, orbiting on the pallid leash of science.
We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.
“No one can serve two masters.” Faith must be complete. And, who — might I ask — cleanly severed the material from life, as if the material could be contemplated as a baby shark in formaldehyde? Was it you, Descartes? Is that you, Comte, in the dim-lit corner?
Centralized planning is doomed to fail, the system of production and consumption is too complex.
I agree. But out of the pot and into the fire?
Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.
Please show your work.
We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes.
Selfishness begets selflessness. A strange mathematics.
Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting. Let’s stick with money.
True: love will not scale to this dizzying height of exponential growth. Love will not be made a datum point in your calculations. It is good this system does not claim love; that would be dishonest. But neither do you claim the will to power. Because its brutal? No. Because it didn’t work. And now, only the paltriest of consolations remains, greed.
We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.
A benediction: May the opiate economy make the population comatose so that their passions are stillborn and their collective action is castrated.
We believe that since human wants and needs are infinite, economic demand is infinite, and job growth can continue forever.
And they chanted utopia and donned their red caps.
We believe the techno-capital machine
Translation: We believe in the techno-capital machine, the creator of heaven and earth.
We believe in accelerationism
Hartmut Rosa sighs.
It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us.
Copernicus was wrong; the universe revolves around our thrones.
Smart people and smart societies outperform less smart ones on virtually every metric we can measure.
What ought we do with the so-called “dumb”? And who is the teacher who supplies the dunce hat?
We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think.
Your words, not mine.
We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.
Attention high school debate team: It is always advantageous to describe the opposition as murderers.
We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.
This is like slamming down the gas pedal when approaching a cliff.
We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis.
Synthetic trees require no water.
A technologically advanced society has unlimited clean energy for everyone.
And all the citizens are beautiful, tall, healthy, wealthy, and eat ice cream at every meal.
Fuller: “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”
Trust them: you’ll enjoy being the emperor of a kingdom of non-things.
However, we are not Utopians.
You don’t say? And by “constrained vision,” you mean merely “infinity”?
Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.
Throw out the old myths (all the ones about hubris, for sure) but give us the power of myth. And why did you have to bring Joseph Campbell into this? That’s just not cool.
“‘Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.’”
Another note to the before-mentioned debate team: When you quote Italian fascists of the Twentieth Century, make sure to leave the quotation anonymous; this shows tact.
We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength.
I can’t decide whether to make an Ayn Rand or Nietzsche joke.
Material abundance from markets and technology opens the space for religion, for politics, and for choices of how to live, socially and individually.
Money first. Religion and philosophy after, if they fit with the creed.
[A long quote from Nietzsche]
Nietzsche specifically argued against the scientific spirit of optimism in Birth of Tragedy.
We invite everyone to join us in Techno-Optimism. The water is warm.
Perhaps because the pot is boiling.
Where are we going?
With prayer, not where you think.
Photo: “Daedalus and Icarus,” Anthony van Dyck
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Well said. It’s certainly easier if all the dangerous things suddenly become moral imperatives!
The truth is that it's easier to live with yourself if you adopt an accelerationist perspective—all of a sudden the bad things you do will be overcome by progress.
Otherwise, you're stuck trying to decipher how to live selflessly and without destroying the world you love—an impossible task.