There seems to be a growing divide in the tech community over the pursuit of technological advances and the risks they pose.
A few recent examples:
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SpaceX is pushing the frontier of space exploration while getting pushback from Fish & Wildlife Service biologists over launch impacts on quail eggs and land crabs.
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I’m hearing some top tech CEOs that believe OpenAI’s decision to fire Sam Altman stem from the board’s concerns about AI risks.
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Even in Bitcoin, there are pretty strong voices pushing for both protocol experimentation and protocol ossification
I’m trying to wrap my head around this debate, but don’t yet have a clear understanding of what each crowd believes.
As far as I can tell, the largest movements seem to be:
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the “e/acc” or effective accelerationism crowd that believe accelerating tech progress will solve society’s problems
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the decelerationism crowd that believes slowing down tech progress will solve society’s problems
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and then there is the effective altruism crowd which i think is part of the decelerationism crowd but i don’t really know enough about it to be sure. the only times i’ve heard that phrase used were in conversations about SBF and Sam Altman.
Would love it if someone on here could steelman these competing ideologies and really break down the different ways they see the world.
As a side note, I also wonder how to categorize Bitcoiners using these frameworks.
There are certainly a number of Bitcoiners advocating for more tech progress, both within and outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem, but there is also a cohort of Bitcoiners that dislike new tech and long for traditional architecture, agriculture, culture, and a stable, reliable Bitcoin without new features.