Friedrich Nietzsche would certainly have millions of followers on social media if he were alive today. A master of aphorisms, this 19th-century German philosopher's greatest work includes phrases like "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger"; "Look into the depths, and the depths look back at you"; and the classic phrase: “God is dead. God is still dead. And we killed him."
From Andrew Tate to Bronze Age perverts, Nietzschean thought has even seen a slight resurgence online thanks to the excesses of the progressive left. As the "Red Pill Lord" of his day, Nietzsche led a polemic against Christianity and its Christian-inspired philosophy of asceticism and egalitarianism. Vokeyism, as modern Nietzscheans would say, had its origins in Christian "slave morality," a reversal of classical aristocratic morality that espoused the virtue of sacrifice, neutralized human supremacy, and, above all, sought to protect the innocent.
Between the attacks on gifted programs and the growing tolerance for social unrest in American cities, we modern Nietzscheans are certainly on the right track. But according to its new leader, venture capitalist and Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, Nietzsche can even help us understand the current backlash against new technologies.
As Andresen explained in his recent Techno-Optimist Manifesto, "we are being lied to" about technology. We are told it destroys jobs, harms the environment and creates inequality. Instead, he wrote, "our civilization is built on technology," because technology is "the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress and the achievement of our potential."
Andreessen's penchant for aphorisms is well known. In 2011, he declared that "software is eating the world." During this pandemic, his call "It's time to build" has become a rallying cry for builders and technologists across the country. His latest manifesto is no different. Andreessen's teachings, written as a series of short statements and one-sided essays, were not meant to convince technical skeptics, but rather to create a Nietzschean aesthetic. On one side are technological "superhumans" who take risks to find a future that is richer, freer, and more abundant. On the other hand, small enemies stand in the way of progress: growth retarders, AI skeptics, government bureaucrats and ESG consultants.
As a fan of Virginia Postrell's 1998 classic The Future and Its Enemies , I know many of these points, and many of them ring true. However, aphorisms can create an illusion of depth and are no substitute for reasoned arguments. Unfortunately, this analytical weakness ends up tying Andriessen's Manifesto in knots of internal contradictions.
Consider Andresen's quote about the anti-humanist philosopher Nick Land. "Combine technology and markets, and you get what Nick Land calls the technological capital machine, a machine of constant creation, growth and material abundance," Andresen writes. “We believe,” he continues, “that the technocapitalist machine is not anti-human; in fact, she might be the most pro-human machine ever to exist. It is useful for us . The techno-capitalist machine works for us . All the machines work for us ."
However, whether he realized it or not (and I think he did), it completely upended Land's philosophy. Indeed, the term "technocapitalist machine" is meant to emphasize the powerlessness of humanity and its submission to the persistent forces of high-tech capitalism. According to Andreessen, our only goal is to ensure that "the upward spiral of technocapital continues forever," not for our people, according to Land, but for the machines themselves. We're just going to play; A simple digital proxy bootloader that will replace us forever.
Land is the brains behind efficiency acceleration, or e/acc, an online subculture that seeks to accelerate the rise of superintelligent AI. The title is a play on effective altruism, an influential utilitarian moral movement whose proponents viewed the creation of an independent superintelligence as an existential threat.
Land does not entirely agree with their predictions. As a philosophical pessimist and philanthropist, he simply views the end of human civilization with a kind of sociopathic indifference. At one point, Land even suggested examining the Black Death, the plague that killed 25 million people, from the perspective of a mouse. When asked if the human experience was important, Land said, "I don't see why it should be given special attention."
Andresen disagrees with the skepticism of moralists. "Intelligence makes everything better," he writes. As “human rights; we must develop it as fully and widely as possible. . . . Artificial intelligence is our alchemy, our philosopher's stone: we literally make the sand think." This is true to some extent, but it does little to assuage fears about the specific risks associated with AI truly surpassing human capabilities, a development that the most AI researchers now consider inevitable References to his intellectual debt to the godfather of the AI death cult offer no comfort either.
Andresen's confusion boils down to the question of whether technological optimists are utopians. Although Andreessen sees technology as a "universal solution to problems" that will enable us to colonize the stars, he firmly rejects utopian thinking. Instead, he wrote, "We adhere to what Thomas Sowell called a 'limited view' that sees compromises everywhere and views progress as something that 'happens only at the edge.'
This is also my point of view. It also directly contradicts Andreessen's view that technology is a "liberating" force and that "the upward trajectory continues forever." In contrast, Sowell's "limited view" reveals a deeply conservative understanding of human imperfection and thus the dual nature of technology.
Take, for example, the problem of population growth. Andreessen writes that technological optimists estimate that "our planet is severely underpopulated" and that "the world's population could easily reach 50 billion people or more." I agree. However, birth rates in developed countries are falling not because of Malthusian birth control, but because of the forces inherent in modernity itself. For example, the advent of oral contraceptives in the 20th century was undoubtedly "liberating" for women, who gained new autonomy over their biology. At the same time, while it may have been the first "transhumanist" technology, this kind of pregnancy had profound cultural and demographic implications that modern societies are still grappling with.
The result of this observation is not that we should or even can undermine modernity, but simply to emphasize that we cannot cut calls. Therefore, the correct conservative orientation towards technology should not be optimism or pessimism, but rather simple realism, especially when the technology in question, such as artificial intelligence or biotechnology, directly affects what it means to be human.
Although many innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, the exact path of development and diffusion of new technology remains uncertain. We can use public policy and private initiatives to shape technology in ways that strengthen our humanity and allow us to thrive rather than succumb to humanity's fate and oblivion.
Nietzsche, for his part, would almost certainly reject Andriessen's techno-optimism and see it simply as a form of secularization of Christianity, as if technologists were building the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It is true that the conformist and decadent "Last Man", which Nietzsche describes as passive mediocrity and which Andriessen declares to be his sworn enemy, is the result of technological excitement.
As Nietzsche said in The Will to Power : “In thinking that a person chooses a drug, he actually chooses a drug that accelerates exhaustion; Christianity is an example. . . "Progress" is another thing.
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