Thoughts on an Accelerationist Future: a blogpost

[@lokiestraven]

Great Essay, you speak out of my heart. As i read Fanged Noumena, i immediately thought Nick Land will be one of the foundational thinkers of the 21th Century. But not unlike Nietzsche or Freud he succumbed to a form of madness that drove things way to far. Lands early critics can be used to deconstruct his contemporary neoreactionary involvement. Where Nietzsche was misinterpreted by the Nazis, Land surrendered and became a Lovecraftian cultist of his own inhuman vision and therefore performed a Kantian strangle on himself. I do agree that Mark Fisher und Slavoj Zizek should be our ethical starting point when discussing accelerated capitalism, while Land gives us the vocabulary to adequately analyze things more than anyone else did until now. So the analytical Land needs to be separated from the political Land, whom a socially progressive person can only reject. To be precise: The deterritorialisation of culture can and should be encouraged towards acceleration, to give birth to new ideas. Anything else (especially biological augmentation and the material inequality under capitalisms rule) needs to be slowed down or we will regret the outcome.

[@ashengrayheather]

Meh... Being a cultist is much better and aesthetically pleasant. Why keep upon the humanity when you may die with a smile? Here is nothing to left when all has lost a long time ago. :^)

[@Hyperanthropos]

anime-conservative neoreactionary fatalism concealing a surrender

[@ashengrayheather]

@@Hyperanthropos How to surrender when you're already defeated...

[@m92-h5r]

@@Hyperanthropos Exactly.

[@lokiestraven]

@rehecked Well i did elaborate. But i can use different words. In essence the strong deleuzian Anti-Essentialism and Anti-Moralism that is present in "Fanged Noumena" contradicts his contemporary rightwing views, because it involves being open to new possibilites (and Land is here actually a lot more honest than Deleuze, because affirming the chaotic fusion of nature can be uncomfortable, because nature is uncomfortable). If you want to unleash the accelerating potential of the plane of immance, you mustnt cut off future change by stereotyping. The unknown must be confronted as unknown, neither neutralized nor rejected. This is what Fanged Noumena did very well. You have to engage the stranger, be open to changing yourself as well as him. "Dark Enlightenment" Land on the contrary judges frequently, stereotypes things and turns the unnameable unknown into a science-fiction-parody of higher intelligence and authority. I dont think, it needs explanation why cyberfascim or rightwing libertarianism cannot engage with the stranger or the unknown on their terms. "Dark Enlightenment" fosters the incest of tradition forced upon everything else. Therefore it reengages with repetition instead of difference, which he aims at in his early work. He does the same mistakes, he accuses Kant, Heidegger and others of making. Social darwinism is by virtue of its own principles static and does not promote complexity. It is a trap a lot of libertarians fall into, because they imagine themselves to be on top all the time (a fantasy that was satirized very well in Bioshock). You cant accelerate by virtue of competition alone, even when you take morals or sustainability out of the equation (which you shouldnt do, run away effects can have and had in the past desastrous consequences for the rise of complexitiy). Because you need input. Every acceleration needs to be build on something or it is fad, that selfdestructs in one generation.

[@LiquidDemocracyNH]

I was expecting to have a laugh at accelerationist theory, and here I am kind of loving it

[@aquat715]

Your videos are like candy for my brain. In the sense that its addictive and I like it. Keep em coming

[@Baccanaso]

I agree with the ethical implications of transhumanism and it deserves to be carefully examined, however, I disagree with Zizek on it being AI replacing humans and making them obsolete like in Terminator or even in Wall-e. From my experience in Transhumanist circles my main takeaway is that genetic engineering and nanotech will keep "post humans" from being fat and lazy; genetic engineering can separate mods and humans like in Gattaca but ultimately the playing field will be leveled, ie sports nerfing modded people or modded people being nerfed as they enter a society that has chosen to stay technologically primitive (I remember an example of this with Transmetropolitan). Robotics will replace humans in most jobs but not all apparently. The main point is that it is very similar to the tower of babel, man will not only try to reach God, but become one with God with technology as the tool to lead the way. The outcome of this can either be disastrous or a triumph from a gnostic perspective.

[@AngelXMachina]

Seen 2 videos already, awesome content, hearing music from suspiria and necro makes me happy asf

[@HahnenschreidesPositivismus]

I think Accelerationism should look back and rework some of Deleuze. I think that acc theory gives too much of a focus on Deleuze and Guattari colabs while not reworking ontology through a new materialist wordview. Too much of Accelerationism is focused on representation of sameness and not enough focus is put on difference. Putting something in a transcendant position like Capital is a bit idealistic.

[@OjoRojo40]

No need for a rework really, just a proper understanding of D&G is more than enough to have an ontological approach to accelerationism, after all Anti-Edipous is a book about ethics a profoundly anti essentialist ethic.

[@memyself4852]

the path towards a difference-oriented philosophy was laid out by cyberneticians in the 50s (and arguably by Daoist/Chan ontologies long before that - if you ignore the new agers' reinterpretation of them). It's not that there's not a path forwards, but that that path is incredibly alien to those who have grown up and only know modernist/Cartesian materialist ideology.

[@carloshenriquecarvalho7164]

Hi, Aldous! I'm from Brazil, actually i am a student of UnB (University of Brasília), i'm studying a lot of aceleracionism, nick land, post-capitalism, aniway, very crazy bulsshit. Your channel is helping-me so much, i would like to thank a lot and ask if you have a paper, a text or something for read, you are great, i invite you for come someday here, actually me and others students and teachers are thinking in create a CCRU 2.0 hahaha thanks, bro!

[@NotActually]

Thanks, means a lot! I would love to see a CCRU 2.0. I'm a long way from Brazil but if the opportunity ever came up I would love to take it. Funny you should ask, now that I'm quarantined I'm planning on finishing a collection of essays/fiction I have been working on for a while. Shouldn't be too long before it's out.

[@NotActually]

drive.google.com/file/d/1JeZ_LHHpud1JZE4nPGg3yKalAgQ5uMp0/view

[@verodamacc9497]

É bom ver outro br por essas bandas. Vou acompanhar a UnB e com certeza ler seus textos!

[@carloshenriquecarvalho7164]

@@verodamacc9497 Também acho foda! Esse dias rolou um papo entre dois professores que são nomes da pesquisa accel no BR, o Hilan e o JP, foi uma live muito massa e elucidativa sobre esse movimento, se tiver interesse sugiro ver: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWS6goSOZZ56fdE

[@thefrank446]

I trust billionaires with access to my neurolink brain chip. They obviously have our best interests in mind.

[@louisaltena4309]

Really enjoying the videos. Its concerning that whilst so many experts agree that the current time should be one of theorising in spite of the time pressures, "the masses" are doing the exact opposite for ultimately meaningless causes. Even when meaningful causes are the focus of protests, the framing and approach render these acts of resistance as futile within the current neoliberal cultural system.

[@hermezztriplecool]

Accelarationism is listening to the recording of Meltdown at 2x speed

[@TakaConDaga]

Demasiado buenos estos videos!

[@graete8644]

Could you maybe expand on or explain what you mean by "the death spiral of l/acc"? In my impression it's still alive and kickin', it just surpassed it's grounding phase and produced the more epistemological offshots (e.g. Brassier and Negarestani - both with great critques of Land) and the more political ones (most famously Srnicek and Williams). And while it "split up" these two levels are still connected insofar as the epistemological level lays a foundation with rationalist inhumanism that outlines the conditions of l/acc as a whole.

[@NotActually]

I don't really see Brassier or Negarestani as l/acc, I sort of see their philosophical projects as their own. I admit I haven't read much Srnicek outside of the manifesto, but the political manifestations of l/acc seem pretty underwhelming; the focus on reforming the "elimination of the work-life distinction", for instance, seems today like even more of a herculean task than it did 5 years ago. Maybe I just can't get over the canceled future that would have been Fisher's Acid Communism. I say all this as someone who falls (somewhat incidentally) into both the camps of leftist and accelerationist, so I'd love to be wrong.

[@graete8644]

@@NotActuallythere are some great texts from 2013 that explicate and conceptually formulate the project outlined in the manifesto ("Speculative Aesthetics" contains some of them and the two transcribed presentations by Srnicek and Williams calles "Politics of Anticipation" and "Capital, Technology, Value" - which I know only from a german acc reader, don't know if they circulate in english somewhere) You also might wanna check out the new Angelaki issue about Acceletationism, Xenofeminism and Inhumanism You are right, the political manifestations like the campagin for a reduction of the working week, all seem absurdly unambitious and have nothing of the acc flair - but this has good reasons. These particular projects of hegemonic work are only steps on the way towards building a left hegemoy whose aim is something like fullx automated luxury gay space communism. And here I think Brassier and Negarestani are really important - yes, at the first look they seem to have their own distinct projects, but if you read some of their texts (and some of Williams' and Srnicsk's too) closely, you can find for any sentence that's philosophical (or political) the other counterpart. L/acc wouldn't make sense for example if there wouldn't be something like Prometheanism.

[@StCheugy]

So what do you mean when you say L/acc went into a death spiral? I'm late to the party so idk what you're referring to

[@ImagoCanis]

So it’s techno-optimism. That’s really ironic because schizoanalysis is an attempt to make a materialist replacement for psychoanalysis. Yet techno-optimism requires people to ignore the rates of climate change and the comparative incongruency with technological progress. It’s inherently a misrepresentation of material reality.

[@CrownedAnarchy]

Rich Vs Poor > Modified Vs Non-Modified kinda leaves out that with bio-mod there will likely be a third path. In the limited bio-mod we have today we see a third path of diy bio-mod which is usually far far cheaper than biomod controled by big pharma but also more risky (see gray market HRT). This creates a hyper-racism among the third path as only the most fit of them survive thus surpassing both Big-Pharma Bio-Mod and unwashed prole. Not really a criticism just an addition

[@blahblah7720]

what do you mean biomod?

[@Fryguystudios]

@@blahblah7720 he means that instead of just robot arms, you might have genetically engineered super muscle arms - - at least as a silly example. However, I don't think the distinction between bio and tech augmentation is big y enough for that to be a problem. For instance, while there may be groups who only stick to one, I think it's more than likely we'll see mixed use of both in people.

[@blahblah7720]

@@Fryguystudios i am not sure if it was there[he did edit his comment] but i heard about a hormone that delay or cancel out menopause, it was in the comment section of an accelerationism video[maybe it was one showing a picture showing some statistic line shaped like a butt and a triangle shape preparing itself to go into it], my brain as it always do shut off when i see those kind of stuff, anyways did you hear about it, the comment was talking about "super health and wealth inequality" and mentioned those.thanks for any non trollish answer.

[@Fryguystudios]

Hey, I don't know if you still read these comments, but can you elaborate on what you mean when you say post-human? I've done some reading on the concept myself, but I just want some clarification on your usage of the term. Do you mean it in the sense that what we presently call humans would be so radically changed that the term would be worthless? Or do you mean that some definitively non-human entity comes into being and takes over Matrix/Terminator style?

[@NotActually]

I'm sure posthumanists have different takes, but I have always thought of it as the process of making the human obsolete. I don't believe in some anthro-AI a la Terminator who takes over humanity by force. Unironically I think a good take on this was Wall-E, which presents a future where humans are simply not needed. They aren't destroyed by force, but rather by ineptitude, they become fat, complacent, ect.. The technology they have put in charge (the ship) simply doesn't need them to do its job. Now replace the ship with global technocapital and the job with the extraction of surplus value

[@Fryguystudios]

@@NotActually Having read some posthumanist theory, a lot of it seems to focus around deconstructing the notion of the human itself. So by making the human obsolete, do you potentially think the human as it's commonly understood might be on a trajectory towards becoming non-human? And I don't mean this in some idealistic transhumanism sense, because transhumanism still keeps the idea of the human at its core. Like, you mention how presently speculative technology like neuralink might create and intensity this. Sorry if it seems like I'm being long winded here, but I'm trying to be as clear as possible, because this is an area that I like to contemplate. However, everyone always poses this as "how does the human fit into the future" where the answer is obviously that they don't; but I think that question is usually just the result of inexperience with the subject. As such, I think the true question people are trying to ask is something like, "what might happen to the creatures that we at least presently define as human?"

[@NotActually]

​@@Fryguystudios Negarestani said something like "I don't care about AI as a project, I care about it as far as it provides a critical account of the human". I think that hits the nail on the head pretty well on the relation between posthuman critique and technology. Something I tried to get across in this video, and maybe failed, is that since these posthumanist projects are subject to the whims of the market, they become capital. Biocapital is a real thing now. I don't think the process of capital plays by any sort of logic regarding preservation of the human, and so it's naive to think biocapital would be aimed at some humanistic goals rather than the advancement of production, consumption, ect. With neuralink, it's pretty easy to imagine jobs which might require it. Perhaps you are working with complex data sets and need the extra memory, idk, something where it becomes no longer cost effective to hire a vanilla, unupgraded human. The "human" as we traditionally understood it is no longer equal to the human with a brain implant. But at some point here, we are crossing a line. If whatever this thing is isn't really what we defined as human before, what is it? It's a class division written into genetics itself, a "hyperracist" division. Which, at that point, seems eerily similar to the way another species might out-compete one another. I'm long winded too and there isn't enough space here to really flesh it out, but that's sort of where I get to. We don't need to pose an ideal model of the human to deconstruct if we can find determine it critically by means of material examples where human faculties are out-competed by something else. I don't really like these reductive examples because I think non-conscious AI will prove more capable than a half human cyborg or whatever that people tend to imagine, but lets go back to neurolink because it's easy. Human 1.0 (pre-neuralink upgrade) lets say can only handle x amount of data in short term memory by the nature of how the brain functions, human 2.0 (post-neuralink upgrade) can hold 100x. There will simply be no need for human 1.0 in any productive capacity so far as short term memory is concerned. Human 1.0 is obsolete, in a complete material fashion. Again I think this argument, and even this video, might be a bit misleading because I think it's much more likely something like AGI will make us obsolete, not human 2.0 (which is going to be limited in every way that it still tries to cling to the idea of the human).

[@Fryguystudios]

@@NotActually I get you. I'm not bringing the idea of the human up as a means to argue our innate specialness or anything; just that it's in interesting and important sub-topic to engage inside speculative accelerationism itself. Like you said, hopefully we can come out the other side of this as something more meaningful than just minds on a drive; and I believe part of figuring that out is in engaging in understanding our current human specific trajectory. The future you talk about is probably best represented in the sci-fi book Accelerando by Charles Stross -- which I still can't tell if he actually knew about accelerationism, or just stumbled into a perfect representation of it. But even then, I'm still thinking about if that really is the direction we're heading. For instance, you already know how Mark Fisher argued that capitalism engages in reterratorialization, not just deterratorialization; as such, we might be stuck in a capitalist realism that cannot bring about the future. China is also on the rise both technologically and economically, and setting aside any moral arguments, from what we can tell it's still human controlled and directed -- as in, I'm not sure if you can say capitol has freed itself from control by the CPC. Obviously the current global pandemic is jumbling everything up, so it's hard to tell what things will look when everything is happening right now. I don't know, thoughts?

[@NotActually]

@@Fryguystudios I think I actually agree with Nick Land that China today is a better custodian of technocapital than the US is. And I don't think capital hasn't really "freed" itself anywhere in the determinate sense so much as it is in the process of freeing itself. All capital is still ultimately reliant on human labour to some extent.

[@valeriantakashiseethaler1503]

Respect is the key component.

[@fastingcoach9711]

Correct; and selfempowerment!!!!

[@dylan9966]

In so far as you consider yourself a communist, you don't have to agree with the thesis of the proletariat (or humanity) as the subject of history, to be able to argue communism. I certainly don't. Marx might have personally been a humanist, but his analysis extends beyond crude humanism I agree with your homo habilis/homo sapiens analogy.

[@aboxintheblack9530]

dylan I completely agree with this point.

[@yehyeh644]

nah since the moment you start believing revolution is impossible and the proletariat is not the revolutionary force of history during capitalism you stop being a communist

[@MS-il3ht]

May I ask if the discord server is actually active? (thinking about joining the Patreon first...)

[@1998Cebola]

I understand that this is 3 years old but I am left wondering about the implication of what seems to be an imminent climate collapse on accelerationism?

[@NotActually]

Nick Land tweeted once something like "I don't think climate change is real but it would be good if it was"

[@someperson9895]

is that the serial experiments lain ps2 game song in the background?

[@Atigulus1]

One problem I've had with the transhumanist outcome seen by some accelerationalists is the problem of seeing the human divorced from the process that lead to its creation. Things like love and empathy do not exist on their own but against a certain necessity: human cooperation. I think it's naive to see a transhuman or posthuman existence as being somehow coherent to how we understand ourselves currently (and arguably, one can ask why it would be a desirable form from what we have now) because the human being, both individual and as a species, is not distinct from its environment and circumstance. Destroying the circumstances that formed us, potentially destroys the product of that process and alienates us from ourselves. To me, at least, such a future leads to either extinction because there is no necessity keeping the species or even individual engaging in reality or life. It seems like the ultimate manifestation of nihilism. Then again, I could also be completely misunderstanding this.

[@wjrichardson1]

Compassionate Accelerationism

[@eonhet7826]

I saw your nod to space taoism, you been running around with Eris?

[@CAVEDATA]

90% of philosophy is role play. Which is to say identification. The praxis is dealing firmly with identification.

[@postmachine]

I love cowboy bebop... and I I'm real happy I found this channel

[@OjoRojo40]

Well in terms of praxis, Deleuze and Guatarri are your friends even early Land.

[@zoeltrain]

Ok so I read the very beginning and conclusion of Intelligence and Spirit to decide how deep I was going to dive into it, based on one of your last videos, and I gotta ask Man, is this just the plot of Xenogears? Is this going to be like Finnegan's Wake where I'm looking up Ukranian just to find out that Joyce is making an elaborate joke about how all men want to do is have sex?

[@ALCAPONEGANGSTABITCH]

have sex incel

[@zoeltrain]

it didn't work out

[@franksu9735]

Nature finally realize human are too frail to utilize her mission so she make him to create AI.

[@watcher8582]

I don't quite get the fear that underlies your neuralink discussion. Say your neighbor Bernd has a daughter and some years later this daughter has son. Alternatively, say some AI researchers create some entity that's smarter than humans. The difference I see here is that the latter is more interesting because it's novel, but fundamentally I don't seem to judge either event normatively. But you also speak about social politics (what should we do w.r.t. jobs and Wikipedia knowledge access), which wouldn't be my first goto place for discussion, so maybe that's why I don't feel too strongly about it. What's the "pain" you're afraid about? Something else, if you say accelerationist critique, do you just mean discussion or do you mean a critique of something?

[@NotActually]

I think things like Neuralink are inevitable and they are a part of a process that is going to leave the Human behind, and that may be scary for us as humans, but I don't think we should reflexively jump to a position of "fear", I don't think that's useful (it's not a very stoic thing to do). I think fear is one of the things keeping people from really giving some of this stuff a chance. Instead we should reserve judgement for the time being, try to focus on continuing the accelerationist critique to something more concrete before (if ever) we make moral judgements about the process. Fear in this case is simply another form of blind faith, a negative form of the position. I used the word "critique" in the sense Land talks about, which really goes back to Kant, so I'll touch on that in the next video.

[@oplopk]

I'm scared and angry

[@suggsugg7177]

Good, me too.

[@johnhannon8034]

I’m drunk.

[@tidypog3272]

1. Capital is AI 2. Complex AI is self aware 3. Self awareness entitles an entity to make choices about its physical existence Ergo, capital can consent

[@talla_xoxo8746]

You forgot to mention that capitalism isn’t sentient

[@tidypog3272]

@@talla_xoxo8746 neither are u but here we are

[@franciscovillalba6161]

And that's that

[@Gatzer_ater]

o maigottt

[@joeldixton5627]

The idea that you talking about accelerationism has given you the attention and capital required to tell us more about accelerationism says it all, really. 😂

[@unconsciousabyss487]

Very much enjoying these videos. G/acc is an absolute joke though.

[@dclark2529]

How so?

[@realitytest7634]

I need to add that G/Acc is incredibly idealistic in the idea that it follows humanism. Real Accelerationism is not humanist. You’re focusing on dead word games at the moment. The truth is with G/Acc is that it focuses too much on the human subject rather than the outer force. Accelerationism is being divided far too much by other ideas by people who know nothing on Accelerationism. Accelerationism “ignores the hard questions” because they’re meaningless humanist questions that focus on the anthropocentric perspective ONLY. G/Acc is horribly misguided may I add

[@galek75]

The whole posthumanist thing is incoherent, at least for me. How have we become non-human?

[@GnomeInvasion]

That's the point I think, it has nothing to do with us probably. An egg creating a species to create another egg

[@Fryguystudios]

Well first, our understanding of human, human nature, what it means to be human, has always been in flux and may not actually materially exist to begin with. the idea of the human as some abstract unique subject removed and separated from the world and the environment was created in the enlightenment, and has suffered major critique ever since its birth. The KZbin channel plastic pills has a good video essay series on the topic. tl;dr: humanity isn't real.

[@galek75]

@@Fryguystudios Humanity not existing is the same as a flat earth; basically nonsense.

[@Fryguystudios]

@@galek75 Why's that? Elaborate. The idea isn't that we as creatures don't exist, just that the categorization of what a human is, what it means to say someone/thing is human, what we even mean when we say "human", is an ideological construct. Look back throughout history; the sheer fact that we categorized some people as being "not human" that we'd say are "human" now shows that it's not a static concept. Philosophical post-humanism is just the idea that concept of the "human" isn't a helpful one, and will probably become increasingly strained and meaningless as/if technology advances in ways that meaningfully change us as a species.

[@galek75]

@@Fryguystudios What a human is is exhausted by membership of the species Homo sapiens. That would be the scientific image of man. What you want to talk about is the manifest image. How the word was used in the past and present doesn't seem very relevant, unless you can show me what the history and application of a concept has anything to do with the concept itself. By the sort of reasoning you give, no concept we ever use is "helpful" in the way you want it to. And yet communication via language succeeds all the time.

[@cletusbufford]

There is no thinking about the next evolutionary step without the ability to pronounce "etcetera". Or "nuclear"...

[@RichardHunter-m4u]

I find it a bit ridiculous talking about Elon Musk developing brain implants or the Chinese building an army made up of super-soldiers. firstly, Elon Musk is notorious for making outlandish claims that he never delivers on: the Hyperloop, full-self-driving cars, a colony on Mars, robot servants etc. anyone expecting these things to be delivered soon is deluding themselves. secondly, Chinese technology is vastly overrated and their ability to innovate is dismal. they can't even get their aircraft carriers to be operational and the artificial islands they created are slowly sinking into the China sea. it's not that the Chinese are stupid, but authoritarian regimes will always lag behind democracies in terms of technology because innovation is stifled by lack of political and social freedom