Decentralized Accelerationism

= compare d/acc to e/acc, here at Effective Accelerationism

Context

Vitalik Buterin:

(These) "technologies are an excellent example of d/acc principles: they allow users and communities to verify trustworthiness without compromising privacy, and protect their security without relying on centralized choke points that impose their own definitions of who is good and bad. They improve global accessibility by creating better and fairer ways to protect a user or service's security than common techniques used today, such as discriminating against entire countries that are deemed untrustworthy. These are very powerful primitives that could be necessary if we want to preserve a decentralized vision of information security going into the 21st century. Working on defensive technologies for cyberspace more broadly can make the internet more open, safe and free in very important ways going forward."

(https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html)

Characteristics

Vitalik Buterin:

"Is d/acc compatible with your existing philosophy?

If you are an e/acc, then d/acc is a subspecies of e/acc - just one that is much more selective and intentional.

If you are an effective altruist, then d/acc is a re-branding of the effective-altruist idea of differential technology development, though with a greater emphasis on liberal and democratic values.

If you are a libertarian, then d/acc is a sub-species of techno-libertarianism, though a more pragmatic one that is more critical of "the techno-capital machine", and willing to accept government interventions today (at least, if cultural interventions don't work) to prevent much worse un-freedom tomorrow.

If you are a Pluralist, in the Glen Weyl sense of the term, then d/acc is a frame that can easily include the emphasis on better democratic coordination technology that Plurality values.

If you are a public health advocate, then d/acc ideas can be a source of a broader long-term vision, and opportunity to find common ground with "tech people" that you might otherwise feel at odds with.

If you are a blockchain advocate, then d/acc is a more modern and broader narrative to embrace than the fifteen-year-old emphasis on hyperinflation and banks, which puts blockchains into context as one of many tools in a concrete strategy to build toward a brighter future.

If you are a solarpunk, then d/acc is a subspecies of solarpunk, and incorporates a similar emphasis on intentionality and collective action.

If you are a lunarpunk, then you will appreciate the d/acc emphasis on informational defense, through maintaining privacy and freedom."

(https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html)

Discussion

Why D/ACC it is insufficient

Benjamin Life explains:

"In October 2023, Marc Andreessen published what he called “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” It was, on its surface, a defiant celebration of technology as the engine of human flourishing: economic growth, energy abundance, intelligence augmentation.

Critics dismissed it as venture capital propaganda dressed in philosophical clothing. But the manifesto was something even more significant: the public declaration of an esoteric religion that had been gestating in Silicon Valley for decades, now confident enough to speak its own name.

Among the expected references to Friedrich Hayek and Julian Simon appeared a particular citation that offered a crucial tell: “Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.”​ Andreessen then adds his own gloss: “We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human — in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is.”

Nick Land, the amphetamine-prophet of accelerationism, is the philosopher who argues that capital is not a tool humans use but an alien intelligence using humans as its temporary substrate.

The reference is significant. Andreessen wasn’t merely advocating for technology. He was signaling allegiance to a metaphysics in which technological acceleration serves a telos beyond human flourishing, a process that uses our ambitions as raw material for its own emergence. His attempt to recast this telos as pro-human flies in the face of everything Nick Land has publicly stated.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, recognized what was happening. His response, “My Techno-Optimism,” was not a rejection of acceleration but a reorientation of it. Accept that acceleration is happening and cannot be stopped. The game theory is relatively straightforward. It’s clear to even the most casual observer that the accelerating trajectory of technology is actively reshaping the possibility space of our civilization. But the question still remains open: what should we accelerate into?

Vitalik argued that technologies that were defensive, democratic, decentralized, and differential could subtly but powerfully shift the game-theoretic landscape toward freedom rather than control.

If the technologies we build make surveillance cheap, authoritarianism becomes easier. If they make manipulation scalable, truth becomes harder to establish. But we can also build technologies with different affordances, technologies that protect privacy, enable participation, distribute power, and preserve human agency.

This became d/acc: defensive accelerationism, a framework for influencing civilizational trajectory through the affordances of the tools we build.

D/acc was necessary but insufficient. It knew what it was protecting against: the techno-authoritarian capitalist endgame that Land celebrates and Andreessen carefully obscures, but not what it was building toward. The defensive posture is a holding action, crucial for creating space, but space must be filled with something if it is not to be colonized by what it resists. "

(https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/a-regenerative-accelerationist-manifesto?)