Effective Altruism versus Effective Accelerationism
December 2nd, 2023 (11 months ago) • 2 minutes
Effective altruism (EA) is a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice.
Effective accelerationism (EAcc) is a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to accelerate the development of technology, and put them into practice.
Both groups consistently fight each other as if they are different, but in reality, they are just two faces of the same coin. They differ only in the timeline they perceive for when something should happen; for example, EA delays things while EAcc hastens them.
Yet, both groups constantly debate their stands, grounding them in complex scientific and philosophical arguments that are not really related, like thermodynamic bias or the fluctuation dissipation theorem, referenced here. Rather than concrete evidence, they had resorted to more abstract and long-termist views such as nuclear war, and AI dominance.
If you look closely, many of these people always start with the assumption that they are the first to think about the subject matter, dismissing the works of other researchers, and thus building up this mental model to reinforce their idea. For example in SBF's case, his mental framework of doing enormous good for billions of people and optimising towards that, led him to fraud cases when his motive morphed into relentless pursuit of personal wealth and influence.
What should happen? Instead of aligning deeply with one, we should aim to integrate the best of both worlds, considering both the present and a realistic future. We should embrace the expertise of others and build upon it, rather than solely relying on our own limited knowledge to develop technology.