I am terribly surprised that ultra-rich sociopaths have no empathy toward mankind.

The real issue here is not that these people support a terrible vision of the future; it’s that we are allowing these sociopaths to run our world now.

There is an inherent opportunity cost that will be measured in millions of lives if the tech developing is artificially held back.

People are overly focused on things like AI art or copywriting and aren’t as in touch with the compounding effects taking place in fields like medicine or the sciences.

So in that sense, Accelerationism as opposition to the increasingly fear mongering Effective Altruism perspectives on AI is valuable.

But they really should figure out that the thing that’s going to accelerate the future the most is going to be individualized access to capital, not centralized consolidation of it.

If each individual can effectively be 100x as productive in a variety of subspecialties aided by AI, it’s not a skeleton crew of humans leftover at a mega-corp maximizing their quarter revenues while maintaining the status quo that’s going to be delivering the future, but rather the next generation of people in their garages working on what’s going to replace the status quo.

The fewer people who have garages in the first place, or medical coverage to pursue those aspirations without endangering themselves and family, or food on the table while getting momentum going - well then the fewer people genuinely working on delivering the future rather than extending the present as long as possible, future be damned.

So the core idea is a good one - technological advancement has probably had the greatest impact on human net happiness and is why at least 1/4th of the people in the world today are alive vs survival rates two centuries ago, myself included.

But the way to actually achieve that outcome at the fastest rate is the opposite of what’s the economic policy of the majority of people promoting it.

Its fine. Once they’ve developed AI consumers, AI can generate content for AI consumers to spend AI money on. Humans will become a second class species relegated to consuming content produced by humans. Its fine.

Prediction: The world will return to something that looks like feudalism, with increased clamping on birth rates until a few rich holders remain with their human retinues solely there to entertain and flatter them. Otherwise, AI and robotics will cosset them.

Once production is automated there is little need for workers, and once knowledge work is automated there is no need for a professional and technocratic class. Consumers have nothing to spend, so they are effectively a drag on the economy of wealth.

That world then looks a lot like the time before the merchant class developed. Everything of any quality is made for the wealthy, and everyone else exists solely at the pleasure of their masters.

Who is e/acc?