19 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
19 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Accelerationism"
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chunk: 6/9
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T14:56:05.593251+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
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---
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Denis Chistyakov notes "Meltdown", a CCRU work and one of the writings compiled in Fanged Noumena, as vividly expressing accelerationism. Here, Land envisioned a "technocapital singularity" in China, resulting in revolutions in artificial intelligence, human enhancement, biotechnology and nanotechnology. This upends the previous status quo, and the former first world countries struggle to maintain control and stop the singularity, verging on collapse. He described new anti-authoritarian movements performing a bottom-up takeover of institutions through means like biological warfare enhanced with DNA computing. He claimed that capitalism's tendency towards optimization of itself and technology, in service of consumerism, will lead to the enhancement and eventually replacement of humanity with technology, asserting that "nothing human makes it out of the near-future." Eventually, the self-development of technology will culminate in the "melting [of] Terra into a seething K-pulp (which unlike grey goo synthesizes microbial intelligence as it proliferates)." He also criticized traditional philosophy as tending towards despotism, instead praising Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis as "already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972." Le states that Land embraces human extinction in the singularity, as the resulting hyperintelligent AI will come to fully comprehend and embody the Real of the body without organs, free of human distortions of reality. Gamez considers Land to have an obsession with artificial intelligence and intelligence in general; as human intelligence can only be enhanced so far, hyperintelligence and the freeing of desire must be realized with human extinction. He notes Land's Lovecraft reference of "think face tentacles" as highlighting Land's interest in transformation to the point of becoming inhuman and unintelligible.
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Land has continually praised China's economic policy as being accelerationist, moving to Shanghai and working as a journalist writing material that has been characterized as pro-government propaganda. He has also spoken highly of Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, calling Lee an "autocratic enabler of freedom." Hui stated "Land's celebration of Asian cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore is simply a detached observation of these places that projects onto them a common will to sacrifice politics for productivity." Land's interest in China for technological progress, stemming from his CCRU days, has been considered an early form of sinofuturism.
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Noys is a staunch critic of Land, initially calling Land's position "Deleuzian Thatcherism". He accuses it of offering false solutions to technological and economic problems, considering those solutions "always promised and always just out of reach." He also criticized Land's interest in submitting to capitalism's destructiveness, stating "Capitalism, for the accelerationist, bears down on us as accelerative liquid monstrosity, capable of absorbing us and, for Land, we must welcome this." Slavoj Žižek considers Land to be "far too optimistic", critiquing his view as deterministic in considering the singularity to be the pre-ordained goal of history. Contrasting it with Freud's death drive and its lack of a final conclusion, he argues that accelerationism considers just one conclusion of the world's tendencies and fails to find other "coordinates" of the world order.
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==== Dark enlightenment ====
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Land's involvement in the neoreactionary movement has contributed to his views on accelerationism. In The Dark Enlightenment, he advocates for a form of capitalist monarchism, with states controlled by a CEO. He views democratic and egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity, stating "Beside the speed machine, or industrial capitalism, there is an ever more perfectly weighted decelerator ... comically, the fabrication of this braking mechanism is proclaimed as progress. It is the Great Work of the Left." Le states "If Land is attracted to Moldbug's political system, it is because a neocameralist state would be free to pursue long-term technological innovation without the democratic politician's need to appease short-sighted public opinion to be re-elected every few years."
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Geoff Schullenburger attributes this change to the bursting of the dotcom bubble and the rise of Web 2.0; Land blamed the lack of technological revolution on the progressivism of the new internet and the companies that ran it. Zack Beauchamp credits Land's life in China and his admiration for Deng and Lee. Gamez notes that Land maintains his criticism of the "Monopod" of human politics in the neoreactionary concept of the Cathedral, additionally retaining his interest in intelligence. He also notes that Land is "simply catching up to Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Peter Brimelow, and assorted other radically right-wing libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, committed to 'cracking up' the democratic nation-state in favor of an 'ethno-economy.'" As of 2017, "Land argues now that neoreaction ... is something that accelerationists should support", though many have distanced themselves from him in response to his views on race.
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=== Left-wing accelerationism === |