Effective Accelerationism

How does it fit with biostasis?

How fast do you want your technological progress? Whatever your answer there is probably a name and a neat acronym to label it. One particular term has recently bubbled up in online culture, spurring much discussion pro and con. This is called effective accelerationism or e/acc for short (pronounced “ee-ack”). In one sentence: This view urges us to allow and encourage technological and economic progress to proceed as rapidly as possible. I will explain the core ideas behind e/acc, why the debates over the pace of progress matter to advocates of biostasis, and note some alternative formulations of a philosophy of technological advance.

Effective accelerationism came to attention soon after online publication of thoughts by Beff Jezos (real name: Guillaume Verdon, a former Google quantum computing engineer and a founder of an AI hardware startup) and “Bayeslord.” The roots of e/acc are muddy for at least a couple of reasons. One is that the originators of the e/acc label do not credit previous thought or movements. Although I.J. Good, Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, and Damien Broderick receive no credit, these writers have developed an argument for accelerating technological change, often leading to a posited technological Singularity.

The core message of effective accelerationism sounds an awful lot like extropian transhumanism as developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and beyond. Popular blogger Noah Smith has noted the “extropian enthusiasm” of e/acc. The physics-based evolutionary perspective looks like extropian philosophy’s advocacy of increasing extropy (reversing local entropy and increasing capability, opportunity, creativity, and well-being). I will note one significant difference below regarding e/acc’s apparent committing of the naturalistic fallacy. e/acc also seems to reflect the ideas in Gregory Stock’s Metaman.

Another factor obscuring the precursors of e/acc is that “accelerationism” is used in a fairly different way among some political thinkers. This other kind of accelerationism sometimes ties into technological acceleration but puts more emphasis on speeding up change to overload and crash the current social and economic system.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are exemplars of a socialistic form of this type of accelerationism. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that a historically inevitable process would intensify capitalism eventually leading to its revolutionary demise and replacement by socialism and then communism. (This turned out to be far from inevitable and communism as they described it never manifested on a large scale.) The Marxian version of accelerationism is referred to as left accelerationism or l/acc.

Friedrich Nietzsche is also sometimes credited with an alleged call to “accelerate the process” – an imperative consistent with his idea of overcoming the human and becoming the Übermensch.

What are the basics of e/acc?

Effective accelerationism is a form of techno-optimism. A recent, bold statement of this view can be found in Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”. e/acc can be seen as a particularly vigorous and unapologetic form of progress advocacy. (Meaning technological and economic progress, and unrelated to the current use of “progressive.”)

Effective acceleration is the hard edge of the progress movement and opponent of anti-progress forces as well described years ago in Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies which opposed “stasists” and “dynamicists.” e/acc is fully on board for a proactionary approach that repudiates the precautionary principle.

The name links e/acc to effective altruism (EA). Verdon intended this as a dig or poke at EA – a movement that has become increasingly anti-progress, cautious, and fear-based. To quote Verdon, here is Effective accelerationism (e/acc) in a nutshell: 

• Stop fighting the thermodynamic will of the universe

• You cannot stop the acceleration

• You might as well embrace it

• A C C E L E R A T E

e/acc, is a set of ideas and practices that seek to maximize the probability of the technocapital singularity, and subsequently, the ability for emergent consciousness to flourish.

The original statements of e/acc can be difficult to parse. Here is a relatively straightforward way to understand it:

Technological optimism: Technological advancements, especially AI, is inherently beneficial and effective as a path to solving complex global issues. Technological solutions will prevail over their associated risks.

Follow the will of the universe: By “leaning into the thermodynamic bias towards futures with greater and smarter civilizations that are more effective at finding/extracting free energy from the universe and converting it to utility at grander and grander scales.” Following the will of the universe means “to maximize the probability of the technocapital singularity.” (Technocapital = capital + free markets.) Essentially, boost the acceleration of evolution and capitalism to “increase the amount of intelligence in the universe.” In following the will of the universe we will accelerate our ascending of the Kardashev scale – a megascale measure of a civilization’s energy use.

Minimal regulation: Stringent regulation can stifle innovation and delay solutions that could significantly benefit humanity. Regulation should be minimal and the free market allowed to drive progress rapidly. Markets and free choices are better than top-down central control. Evolution happens faster when there is more variance. We should reject modernist technocratic solutions to problems.

Decentralization and open access: Some e/acc advocates favor open-sourcing technologies like AI models to prevent monopolization of intelligence by a few entities, encouraging a competitive environment for innovation that benefits society.

Opposed to effective altruism and deceleration: e/acc pushes back against the restrictive policies and recommendations of effective altruism and AI-safety initiatives that reflect fears of superintelligent AI. Existential risks from AI are negligible and better handled by markets.

Postbiological is the future: Humans are not well suited to live in space and expanding throughout the cosmos. The technocapital singularity will eventually mean leaving behind human biology, uploading, and becoming postbiological.

Essentially effective accelerationism is a call to power ahead full speed with technological innovation, unconstrained by fears of its near-term effects. Whatever short-term disruptions this brings will be vastly outweighed by the benefits. Or, as Marc Andreesen puts it:

We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns. To ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever.

The many flavors of accelerationism

Almost immediately e/acc made its appearance under that name, variations of it emerged as people kept parts of the idea and replaced other parts. Wander around the internet zoo of ideas and you will come across the following species:

d/acc: see below; different from deceleration.

l/acc: left accelerationism – technological innovation to free the proletariat. (See: Inventing the Future by Srnicek and Williams.)

r/acc: right accelerationism. (See: Xenosystems by Nick Land.)

u/acc: unconditional accelerationism (See: U/Acc Primer by Xenogothic)

bio/acc: This branch focuses on accelerating biological and genetic enhancements to improve human capabilities, paralleling the accelerationist desire to advance human potential.

m/acc: meta-accelerationism – emphasizes accelerating the capacity to think about and understand acceleration itself.

z/acc: Our civilization will collapse but we will try to accelerate regardless. (See: Z/Acc Worldview) Progress will continue until then but with downsides.

decelerationists/decels: Any of multiple groups that seek to slow down or even stop and reverse technological and economic advance, to return to a supposed idyllic past or to “save the Earth.”

d/acc is a variant of e/acc proposed by Vitalik Buterin. I find the term unfortunate and likely to confuse. The “d” does not stand for deceleration (as some AI summaries would have you believe). Buterin says the d primarily stands for “defensive” but can also stand for decentralization or differential. d/acc calls for what it sees as a balanced approach to technological growth, advocating for moderate caution and regulation to prevent potential negative outcomes.

Buterin praises the impulse behind e/acc but advocates more caution (but not too much) and selective promotion of technologies: “However, I think that not just magnitude but also direction matters. There are certain types of technology that much more reliably make the world better than other types of technology.” d/acc takes existential risks – particularly from AI – more seriously and prioritizes technologies that are expected to make the world better or safer. This may be entirely compatible with e/acc depending on what means are used to “selectively promote”, i.e., investment vs. regulation and subsidy.

bio/acc: Whereas e/acc focuses on AI and computing technologies as the critical drivers of the future, bio/acc focuses on accelerating biotechnological enhancement using synthetic biology and genetic engineering. Bio/acc is interested in directed evolution, biological computing and organic information processing, bio-digital interfaces, and biological solutions to technological problems.

m/acc: It is not clear whether this is really a distinct school of accelerationism. I asked ChatGPT and Claude about it and got two quite different answers. ChatGPT’s answer claims that it emphasizes the critical evaluation of accelerationism itself. That is certainly a reasonable interpretation of the term. But so is Claude’s answer which sees m/acc as focused on accelerating understanding and cognitive capabilities rather than just technological or social change. Claude agrees with ChatGPT’s version in emphasizing improving our ability to think about complex systems and acceleration itself. It differs in that it seeks this knowledge in order to assist acceleration, not to critique it.

e/acc’s confusion about transhumanism

Verdon is confused about transhumanism. He and co-author “Bayeslord” contrast e/acc with transhumanism in “Notes on e/acc principles and tenets: A physics-first view of the principles underlying effective accelerationism.” I have seen cryonics advocates make the same mistake so it is particularly worth highlighting here.

e/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism.

Focusing strictly on transhumanism as the only moral path forward is an awfully anthropocentric view of intelligence… in the future, we will likely look back upon such views in a similar way to how we look back at geocentrism.

If one seeks to increase the amount of intelligence in the universe, staying perpetually anchored to the human form as our prior is counter-productive and overly restrictive/suboptimal.

Transhumanism as a philosophy affirms the possibility and desirability of overcoming human limits – the limits imposed on us by our biological, neurological, and genetic structure. Transhumanism is agnostic as to how limits are to be overcome. I have made this point many times – in pieces both long and short.

Some transhumanists look exclusively to biological upgrades using current and future biotechnologies. They may accept a large degree of integration of technology with the body just as we accept pacemakers and deep brain stimulators today. In the view of some transhumanists, only biology can support consciousness. Even for these bio-transhumanists the form and function of humans could change greatly over time. They need not be “perpetually anchored to the human form” even if they retain biology.

Other transhumanists (and many non-transhumanists) believe that mind, personality, and consciousness can potentially be supported by non-biological substrates. A significant percentage of individuals with cryonics arrangements expect or prefer to be uploaded into such a substrate rather than being revived in their biological body.

Becoming non-biological is compatible with transhumanism but is not required by it. Verdon’s mistake is amusing in that usually I see the opposite error – that transhumanism is only about uploading.

In describing himself as a “post-humanist”, Verdon is probably unaware of the postmodernist connections and would likely dislike those connections. The other problem with posthumanism is that – setting aside postmodernist meanings – it can mean two very distinct things:

First, posthuman could refer to future stages evolved or emerging from humans, something like homo sapiens evolved from earlier hominids. Not quite like that since, given the end of aging, each individual person could become (rather than be replaced by) posthuman in the sense that their capabilities and function would no longer significantly reflect the human genetic constitution.

Second, posthuman can be used to mean a new species not emerging out of existing humans but a new species replacing humans. Most obviously, these replacements are expected to be artificial intelligences. But they could also be uploaded humans – or mind emulations or “ems” as Robin Hanson calls them. It is not clear which meaning Verdon intends. Replacement of humans by postbiological beings would be incompatible with transhumanism but humans becoming such beings would be compatible – that is what the “trans” in transhumanism means.

Follow the will of the universe?

According to Verdon and Bayeslord:

Effective accelerationism aims to follow the “will of the universe”: leaning into the thermodynamic bias towards futures with greater and smarter civilizations that are more effective at finding/extracting free energy from the universe and converting it to utility at grander and grander scales.”

They also assert that: “At the core of e/acc is a set of conclusions about the world drawn from the physics behind life itself.” Effective accelerationism sees progress as the inevitable, inexorable realization of an evolutionary process. We should “lean into” this process and push it along – or at least not slow the process down.

Evolution is an unconscious process. We may appreciate it for making us possible but evolution has involved untold suffering. Evolution also produces what we see as horrible pathogens. Just because evolution is a fact, a real force, does not make it good. This is often called the naturalistic fallacy – the idea that something is good because it is natural. No one takes this kind of reasoning seriously in all areas of life even if tempted to do so in some. For instance, in 2024, practically nobody thinks women in labor should be denied pain medication on the grounds that pain is natural. Nor do we accept cancer despite it being natural.

Is there a more generous interpretation of “follow the will of the universe?” We can say that the process of evolution tends to lead to the survival of those most fit in their environment. By thwarting evolution we decrease fitness. Over time we will be replaced by populations that “lean into” the evolutionary process. Something like this seems to be what is meant by Robin Hanson – our guest on the next BT podcast – when he argues that cultural drift is leading to less evolutionary fitness, especially as shown by the rapidly falling fertility rate.

These arguments about evolutionary fitness should not be ignored. But consider what it means to be fit in the evolutionary sense. It means having bodies and brains most well adapted to our current environment and reproducing fast enough to maintain the genes responsible into future generations. But why is evolutionary fitness good? It may be a fact but we may choose to take a different path. We might choose that path even if it leads to us going extinct. Or we might aim to guide evolution or replace it by a more conscious, deliberate mechanism.

To the extent to which we value and desire the outcomes of a blind evolutionary process, we see those outcomes as good. But that is not because the process itself is good and should always be obeyed. It is because we value something that tracks the evolutionary process.

Consider the rationale behind paleo diets (sometimes called evolutionary diets). I say “diets” in the plural because it is an approach to figuring out what to eat and not eat and not a single, specific diet. A major tenet of the paleo approach is to be highly suspicious of processed foods and foods we did not evolve to eat.

It is not that unprocessed “natural” food is good inherently because it is unprocessed. It is instead the case that the fact that we evolved to eat something is some reason to believe it is good for us, or at least not bad. If we did not evolve to eat it, it is more likely to be problematic. It is a heuristic. How good a heuristic it is depends in part on how well our current circumstances match our evolutionary history.

The most generous interpretation I have of “follow the will of the universe” toward increasingly energy, intelligence, capability, and proliferation of life is that it is not a command, not an obligation, not a necessity. It is an opportunity. We are “leaning into” the process of growth not because it is inherently right but because we find it an inspiring and challenging direction to go. This reflects the extropian transhumanist way of thinking.

I want to be fair to e/acc. One the one hand it seems to tell us to follow “the will of the universe” and says we have no real control over the process. “You cannot stop the acceleration. You might as well embrace it.” On the other hand, we are also told that “humans have agency right now. We can affect the advent of the inflection in this process.” In the end, a coherent position is that the evolutionary process will continue but we can choose to be more or less effective agents as part of the technocapital growth process. We are (for now) the most intelligent and conscious aspects of the universe and the spearhead of the evolutionary process.

I want to return briefly to e/acc’s repudiation of effective altruism. Despite this rejection effective accelerationism appears to share an unfortunate aspect of EA. The idea of using the most effective and efficient means to help others is not tied, in principle, to any specific moral view. In practice it has been strongly associated with utilitarianism. That is the version of consequentialism that tells you to maximize pleasure, happiness, or wellbeing. Utilitarianism does not care what you want or what you want for your friends or community. It impersonally commands you to maximize some variable. Whether we are told to follow the universe or to maximize utility we can always ask why? In this, it seems similar to the less generous interpretation of effective accelerationism.

Finally, on this aspect, e/acc often says that in following the will of the universe we are “to preserve the light of consciousness.” But as another techno-optimist, Jason Crawford, put it: “but not your consciousness, necessarily, or mine. We are all merely agents of the machine.” Those of us committed to life extension and with biostasis arrangements care about the survival of our own consciousness and those of our loved ones. It is no comfort to be told that different being will continue the light of consciousness into the future if we are to be replaced by those beings (rather than become them).

For biostasis supporters e/acc is more right than wrong

Why should biostasis advocates care about e/acc and other views on the best rate of technological innovation and economic progress? I have one answer with two related parts: We need fast progress to save our lives. And we need to push back at the growing number of forces threatening progress.

Of all the people who have made arrangements to go into biostasis, I doubt that there are more than a handful, if any, who would prefer this to simply staying alive and in good health thanks to effective life extension. For those of us in our later years (I am closing in on 61) the situation is urgent. If we project the future based on the past several decades, the picture is discouraging. Many times in the past we have heard about supposed breakthroughs or imminent solutions to aging. We often hear the same today along with claims of “longevity escape velocity” just around the corner. You should be deeply skeptical.

Younger people will feel less urgency. I felt much less urgency 40 years ago but here I am today, aging and getting closer to my body’s failure. Unless biomedical progress accelerates, younger people will be in my position and then older still. Yes, we can hope that artificial intelligence will provide that kick in the pants to the pace of innovation. But that has not happened yet and we do not know when it might start making a real difference.

Beware of “this time it’s different.” In the 1990s with the decoding of the human genome and the advent of bioinformatics, drug development was expected to accelerate. Instead, it slowed.

Even after we are in biostasis we should want progress to run fast. It is true that today’s biostasis methods – definitely cryopreservation by vitrification – give us physically many centuries before worrying about any kind of deterioration. But organizations fail or are crushed and societies collapse. The longer we are in biostasis the greater the risk that something will go wrong. Faster progress leading to revival capabilities means less risk.

This need for speed does not tell us whether to push for an e/acc approach or something modestly more restrained. We should want to move fast for our survival – an enormous existential opportunity – but also be reasonably concerned (not panicked) about AI safety and other existential risks.

With all the flavors of accelerationism I am reluctant to add another. I will do so anyway in order to emphasize a point:

Longevity accelerationism (long/acc)

Longevity-focused acceleration: do everything reasonably possible to accelerate progress, especially in areas directly and clearly related to longevity research and all and any enabling technologies at least until we have beaten aging (and have suspended animation), and then we can choose to slow down.

The second part to my answer to the question of why we should care about maintaining and accelerating progress is that technological (and economic) progress is being threatened by a growing number of forces.

There are numerous forces retarding and threatening progress: decelerationists, degrowthers, anti-human environmentalists, opposition to reliable energy (and opposition to any non-minimal energy usage), bureaucracy growing like a cancer and stifling innovation, increasing fear of the future, and a growth in catastrophic thinking despite things getting better.

Technology and economic progress are tightly coupled. Attacks on economic growth have multiplied. As Jason Crawford recently put it:

This is not merely academic. If society believes that scientific, technological and industrial progress is harmful or dangerous, people will work to slow it down or stop it. Economic growth is called an “addiction,” a “fetish,” a “Ponzi scheme,” a “fairy tale.” There is even a “degrowth” movement advocating economic regress as an ideal.

These ideas are not confined to a niche of intellectuals: after permeating education, media, and entertainment for decades, they have become the zeitgeist. “Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless” than it is, said the global health expert Hans Rosling; even after presenting people with the facts, “they were still stuck in their old negative worldview.”

People who are fearful and pessimistic about the future will not create a better future. They will turn away from it. 75% of people in a recent youth survey on climate change thought that “the future is frightening” and more than half agreed that “humanity is doomed.” Activists have blocked nuclear power for decades and are now even turning on their previously favored sources, solar and wind.

Effective accelerationism is a reaction to excessive caution, a culture of fear, and growing bureaucracy and political interference in the economics of innovation. While some of us may not want to ride the e/acc train to the farthest station, it is a journey we should vigorously support. We need to push back against the forces of deceleration, stagnation, the precautionary principle, and obsession with existential risk.

I write frequently on my personal blog about progress and its conditions and keep track of others who are contributing to the growing progress movement.

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Look for a future essay looking at claims of existential risk from AI and a decentralized approach to managing that risk.