32
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Get the lowdown on 'e/acc' — Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen
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- Published
- Jul 29 2023
- Word count
- 737 words
Yes... I wonder who that could possibly benefit the most?
... We're a few years away from that guys. I'm sure Elon and his pals will magic some series of words together to blot out the sun instead of being beneficial though.
Honestly, we need less of this "straight line technological advancement and growth at the expense of everything else" mindset. The future needs to be more humanistic, more empathetic and fairer.
But these people are determined to prevent that by starting some kind of capitalism cult.
Ahh yes, San Francisco. The mostly in-need area of the world that technology could really help... Just so happens to be in their backyard. Who'd have thought it?
Imagine a world where Tech Bros could be literal gods, though! Doesn't that seem great?
The egomania of these people knows absolutely no bounds. This particular crackpot philosophy puts even John Galt to shame, a fictional character that is already the embodiment of greed and narcissism.
We all know that TechBros have our best intentions at heart. That's why they're so. Philanthropic... I mean, they give so much time to charity... I mean, they pay their taxes accurately...
Wait a minute.
These men are delusional. Often built off the back of poor people's effort with ego's that require kneecapping, not supporting.
I despise these idiots, just because they sound like a cult of cushioned rich children who've never had to grow up. I wish the system we had didn't reward them and their sycophantic cultists with money and power.
I wholeheartedly agree. I honestly just see this as another ideology to help Silicon Valley workers cope, either intentionally designed to be this way or not. Its easier to feel ok with your company hurting society if you feel like it's needed to help society in the future.
I personally don't see technology going entirely in that direction. I do see technology which is going to be used more and more as a tool of oppression.
Overall though, I can be very pessimistic.
Seriously. This has a justification for causing human misery just baked right in.
Boring dystopian sequel to Swift: An Egomaniacal Proposal. Why only the babies of the poor?
I just can't believe i thought Elysium was 'a little far fetched' like, ten short years ago.
We speedran that steep decline lol
Isn't this the premise to video games like Bio Shock / infinite or system shock or black Mesa et al, and CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength? Tech bros turned cult leaders who destroys (small h flesh and blood ) humans for the sake of Humanity?
Not really. In Bioshock anyway it was a man named Andrew Ryan (a loose play on words for Ayn Rand), who was a leader of industry. He was more analogous to Steve Jobs but I want to seperate the tech from Andrew Ryan. Like Steve Jobs, Andrew was charismatic, had money, and new people. He was an armchair philosophist that, like these tech bros here, was so capitalistic he wanted a utopia away from government, religion, any any other regulatory entity. He wanted this utopia in a shortsighted attempt to speed up innovation, research, and development without pesky safety measures or censors.
His whole thing was putting a bunch of self made smart men in an underwater city to do as they please. They're so smart and such captains of industry, and they burden the weight of society like atlas that they'll make nothing but good decisions and produce excellent invention after the next and mankind will be propelled forward.
He was an idiot. He surrounded himself with smart people, but he was delusional. It took exactly 0.5 seconds for people in rapture to exploit the system he built and turn his utopia on its head and show him why those regulations he hated were made in the first place. Unfettered capitalism is a nightmare and the underwater city went to shit overnight.
Bioshock 2 explored the other end of the spectrum with a matriarch trying out fascism, something Andrew was leaning towards as Rapture went into declined. That failed too.
Bioshock Infinite was interesting, although sort of similar in a lot of ways. It explored a theocratic utopia. As long as you subscribed to the religion, you were "free". This was a fallacy because the utopia was a rigidly ran fascist state full of censorship and control. It was a parallel to early America and spoke about the not so secret religious vein that runs through this country. Infinite showed you what happens when you rebel against religion, it turns nasty and ugly made worse because they tried to cover the nastyness with religion.
In all cases, the men and women were frauds. They're always frauds that don't know shit even about their own fields. The tech bros here at least know tech, they're ignorant to absolutely everything else. If they made a rapture it wouldn't even get off the ground because they don't have enough understanding of anything outside their immediate work area. Can't even build. Don't understand what a real working environment is, don't understand people that aren't them.
There's parallels, but somehow I give more credit to Andrew Ryan. His city would last longer.
lol... like others have said, yes, the absolute hubris and egomania required to say these words with a straight face is astounding. Tangent, as someone who was born there, grew up there, and has most of my family there, and also as a software engineer working in tech, this gets to me in a weird way that's between depressing and amusing. Tone deaf statement for sure.
I'm a bit out of the loop on this, is "fix San Francisco" a well known slogan? What exactly are they suggesting to fix and how do they rationalize that to mean a "golden age"?
San francisco struggles with
All of these generally point to a core issue of economic inequality. "Fixing san francisco" would presumably aim to create a safe city where people can afford to live, and want to work.
Why would San Francisco need to take priority to be fixed, just because they live there? Or is there any actual, like, logic? Or anything specific to that location?
Wanting to fix the city you live in seems pretty normal.
They’re talking about building Dyson spheres. You know, a mega structure surrounding the entire solar system to efficiently capture all of the sun’s energy. So let’s just step back and realize these people are seriously out of touch with reality as we know it and it doesn’t matter what they’re saying.
That’s pedantic as hell.
I approve.
:-D
(I want Ringworld. But we need to invent a material with tensile strength greater that the forces holding atomic nucleai together first. I’m sure the e/acc bros will have that solved by next year.)
Oh, I am not giving any credence to their words or their ambition, I'm just wondering what they actually think needs to be "fixed". No matter how out of touch with reality they are, understanding what they want is still important in order to rationalize why we disagree.
Also, not everyone shares the exact same views, and I think labelling every single person who speaks about e/acc as the same is a dangerous generalization. Yes, they're tech bros, yes, they're out of touch - but I'd still rather know what they're about so I can refute them if I come across one in the wild.
Yeah, here's the tweet but he doesn't elaborate. Looking at other tweets, he seems to be YIMBY though.
I'm local to the area. Executives from whatever industry frequently live in very expensive/exclusive nearby towns like Palo Alto or perhaps San Anselmo or Ross in Marin county.
San Francisco is known for a large population of street people/homeless leading to complaints about things like shit on sidewalks. Also open air drug deals in certain neighborhoods. Also frequent car breakins, making it common knowledge to leave nothing of value in your car, even in the trunk. San Francisco is generous with benefits and services toward homeless people, although there are allegations of corruption with the nonprofits that manage some of the allocated funds. But housing is insanely expensive and weather is mild so homeless are more visible. And we don't have much involuntary mental health care here unless something like a murder happens. So, some homeless people are both not in their right mind and angry, aggressive, threatening and loud.
These folks have something mixed up between their empathy and emotional centers that disables their ability to act in a humanistic way. Functional but detached in a way that makes them dangerous but since they're 'so successful' they get to feel correct while supporters get a dopamine hit from their belief in their Tech 'lords'. The story by Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx and Crate' comes to mind.
Pretty sure the industrialists and railway barons of the 19th century thought the same as these guys. And the European colonialists and enslavers of the 15th–20th centuries. And American Empire in the 20th–21st.
This shit isn’t new, it just gets a fresh coat of paint and rationalizations every few decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/1/15951874/prosperity-gospel-explained-why-joel-osteen-believes-prayer-can-make-you-rich-trump
If I recall correctly, the idea behind this is that any amount of selfish money-grubbing and grifting is justified if you pinky promise you're gonna do a philanthropy at the end when you've made enough money. What defines that end or what "enough money" means seems to be rather fuzzy, shockingly enough.
This is about advancing human civilization for the benefit of the people actually living in the society these tech bros belong to... right? It seems obvious that who they value as people, and what falls under their idea of advancement/philanthropy, doesn't align with what most of us schlubs believe. If a technological leap "at all costs" comes at the cost of the viability of the human species, is that a-OK so long as whatever "silicon-based lifeforms" means get to enjoy the results?
It's patently clear (and rather terrifying, to be honest) that these (mostly) men see themselves as inherently superior to the unwashed masses they claim to work for the benefit of. The narcissism they flippantly put on display is astounding, like they've managed to objectify and infantilize the entire rest of the human race. Like a man who married his sweetheart, and immediately chooses to work away from home in a soul-stealing job that he despises, rarely spending time with his wife and kids and raging at them when they object, simultaneously bragging and complaining to everyone he meets. The kind of man who fully expects his family members to fall on their knees in gratitude when he presents his retirement fund, and if they don't - well, they simply don't get it the way he does. Then at the end, when his health is failing, and his time is up, and he has no one to share the fruits of his technocapital investments with, he'll whine to the long-empty house: "But I did it for us!"
archive link https://archive.li/Khvsk
So basically, any evil that can be even slightly justified should pushed hard and fast? Can we burn Silicon valley to the ground now?