Techbro Theories Of Everything
The Trump mob has a bunch of crackpot theories. One of these, beloved of techbros with Ketamine-plasticized brains, comes from Guillaume Verdon, a 32 year physicist. This Wired article is primarily about Verdon’s alternative to quantum computing, but it gives an introduction to Verdon’s big theory of “effective acceleration”, or e/acc.
Will Knight, the author of the Wired article, gives this bit of background:
By the 1990s, a British philosopher named Nick Land was advocating for a real accelerationist movement that would unshackle capitalism from the restraints imposed by politicians and welcome the technological and social destruction and renewal this would bring. Accelerationist ideas are echoed by other alt-right thinkers, including the influential blogger Curtis Yarvin, who argues that Western democracy is a bust and ought to be replaced.
Let’s take a look at Verdon’s manifesto.
The thermodynamics of the origin of life
Verdon starts by asserting that life emerges as “matter reconfigures itself such as to extract energy and utility from its environment such as to serve towards the preservation and replication of its unique phase of matter.” He links to this article by Katherine Taylor about a theory created by John England.
Current views of the origins of life begin with a primordial soup of raw chemicals in bodies of water with external sources of energy like sunshine and lightening, and constant motion. England’s theory explains how that system can lead to early organized forms of matter. The article explains England’s theory, starting with the words “At the heart of England’s idea…..”
At the risk of oversimplification, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy increases over time. In certain systems, entropy can decrease in clumps of matter that absorb and use energy and emit energy in a less concentrated form, which is to say at higher levels of entropy. Entropy increases in the overall system, but decreases in a small part of the system.
A plant, for example, absorbs extremely energetic sunlight, uses it to build sugars, and ejects infrared light, a much less concentrated form of energy. The overall entropy of the universe increases during photosynthesis as the sunlight dissipates, even as the plant prevents itself from decaying by maintaining an orderly internal structure.
Taylor’s article suggests that this process, called dissipative-driven adaptation of matter, lies at the heart of all evolution, which may or may not be England’s view. Either way, the article acknowledges there are countless other factors that influence the outcomes.
Verdon calls this process dissipative adaptation. He says it “…tells us that the universe exponentially favors (in terms of probability of existence/occurrence) futures where matter has adapted itself to capture more free energy and convert it to more entropy.”
First Interlude
Notice that Verdon uses phrases like “matter reconfigures itself” and “the universe favors”. These phrases could be read to suggest that the universe and the matter it contains have some sort of drive or even a purpose. In this setting, words are used metaphorically, to describe England’s equations. We don’t use the words to reason about the implications of mathematical language, because you can’t safely reason from a metaphor.
Here’s an example. When I was a kid, we had an encyclopedia with a representation of the Bohr model of an atom. It was a map of the US, with a basketball in the center of the country and a couple of ping-pong balls on the coasts of California and Virginia. Someone asked why if there was so much space between the nucleus and the electrons you couldn’t squash the atom into a tighter space. That’s an example of reasoning with a metaphor. Don’t do that.
Also note that Verdon claims that this theory is about extracting “utility” as well as energy. No it isn’t.
Accelerating Evolution
So, the first part of Verdon’s manifesto is consistent with current evolutionary theory, apart from the utility thing. Then Verdon tells us:
Intelligence emerges as a smaller timescale specialization of this adaptation principle; it allows life to identify patterns in the environment which have utility towards acquiring more resources to procreate and/or maintain said intelligent life form.
We’ve gone from absorbing free energy to, I suppose, catching prey. But this view of intelligence isn’t consistent with Darwinian theory in its current form. The range of evolutionary pressures is much broader than simple identifying patterns that represent energy.
Verdon goes on to say that consciousness is the natural limit of intelligence in the individual. So much for people. Then there’s meta-consciousness in the form of organized groups of humans, like corporations and governments and states. In a capitalist system, these “compete for resources” with other meta-organizations.
Second Interlude
Well, that’s nonsense. Elon Musk isn’t competing for resources. He took control of the government and is using it to grab resources from all of us to use as he sees fit, without regard to the impact on other people. Other capitalist organizations do the same thing, though usually with less law-breaking.
As an example, consider renewable energy. In Verdon’s theory, everyone should be grabbing the free energy of renewable sources like the sun. It’s now mostly cheaper than fossil fuels, and is more sustainable. But the giant oil companies have fought it, lied about it, and pushed for more pollution, with the aid of complicit politicians. So if the universe favors free energy, why does this happen?
Or consider the LED bulb. These marvels use far less energy than incandescent bulbs. But the shriekers on the right wing erupted in an apoplectic fit when the government began to insist on their use. Why? It has nothing to do with free energy and dissipative adaptation, that’s certain.
Capitalism is a form of intelligence
Verdon writes:
Hierarchies of information propagation and control are part of the civilizational intelligence; these should be dynamically adapting at all organisational scales and on various time scales, in order to be optimal at identifying and capturing civilizational utility.
Has this guy never heard of intellectual property? That’s part of the capitalist system, and it works against this bullet point, if the bullet point has any meaning outside Verdon’s head. And who gets to decide what “civilizational utility” is?
Verdon says that capitalism is a form of intelligence. The explanation is that it “dynamically morphs” civilization to grab all the utility/energy out there. In his telling making the world safe for profits is a marker for intelligence.
E/ACC has a goal
The goal of e/acc is to recognize this “multi-scale adaptive principle” and accelerate it. That is accomplished by “… letting the intelligent meta-organism system dynamically adapt by itself to new environmental variables whenever they present themselves.”Apparently the universe favors profits.
We already do that. We let corporations, those paragons of intelligent meta-organisms, dump tens of thousands of chemicals into our environment. Turns out a bunch of them are poisons that interfere with our endocrine systems, kill bees and pollute the Gulf of Mexico. That doesn’t seem at all intelligent.
He says that e/acc wants to follow the will of the universe, presumably referring to that free energy/utility/resource/(profit?) thing that keeps morphing in this screed. In other words, he wands to accelerate the transition from the current state of entropy to a higher state of entropy. But why? He doesn’t say.
How do we accelerate?
Deregulation. Low taxes. Freedom for the Techbros. There is no price too high to pay for these goals, including human lives.
Discussion
1. I rarely read the writings of the people Trumpians call intellectuals, mostly because it’s dumb and badly written. Sadly these yahoos have have power now, so it seems like someone should.
2. Verdon doesn’t explain how e/acc will help us be better humans, or live better lives. He’s not interested in this world or the lives of people who live in it. He only cares about the next world he’s trying to imagine.
3. Hannah Arendt says that the Nazis and the Communists claimed to be following and accelerating a scientific program. For the Nazis, it was the laws of nature, and for the Communists it was the laws of history as discovered by Marx. Both programs were said to lead inexorably to the perfection of human beings and human society.
Verdon wants to do the same thing with his very scientific program.
I prefer the explanation I heard years ago that the beginning of life is the result of a progressive chemical reaction. There is no politically driven, selfish motivation in this explanation.
They can all move to Mars, and demonstrate for us how great their philosophy is.
(Hint: they’re not going to enjoy it. Zero-g damages your kidneys.
https://www.earth.com/news/astronauts-can-survive-mars-space-journey-but-their-kidneys-will-be-permanently-damaged/ )
Its a very good analysis of what passes for wingnut intellectual thought. But it certainly doesn’t explain why some 60% of white people voted for Trump, while only about 10% of black people did.
About 17% of black voters reported voting for Trump , according to this PRRI survey: https://www.prri.org/research/analyzing-the-2024-presidential-vote-prris-post-election-survey/
Black women voted consistently with their 2020 vote, but there was a significant swing in the percentage of Black men voting for Trump (and for Hispanic men as well).
This is post is not about voters’ sentiments. It’s about the nearly-all-cis-het-white dudes who are trying to take over our world and deprive us of our agency and autonomy.
You’d be closer to the post by asking what things these techbros would do to voters to achieve their Techbro Theories of Everything, which in Musk and Zuckerberg’s cases included allowing proliferation of influence operations attacking voters’ perceptions ahead of the election.
It reminds me a lot of the sort of intellectual discussions at the end of the nineteenth century about the supposed “life force” and which civilizations/races had more or less of it.
It’s just wishes and prejudice dressed up with metaphors. In Verdon’s case, he seems to expend a lot of effort in engineering a prose style that wants to project itself as technical or philosophical by avoiding language which is metaphorical in a commonplace, i.e., pseudo-poetic way (“No Life Force here buddy!”), but which is in fact still arguing from metaphor.
Yes, pseudo-science, just like the utopian dreams of the 1920s and -30s, just like Freud and Marx, come to think of it, that is, it’s claim to science amounts to little more than “Because I says so.”
The universe has no desires, and no goals. Similarly, matter and energy have no desires or goals. And finally, evolution has no desires or goals.
Sounds like a lot of wish fulfillment (“this is the way things would work if I were in charge”) with a smattering of science inappropriately mixed in to make it seem authentic. These clowns have learned enough to be dangerous, but not enough to realize their shortcomings.
I’m grateful to you for reading this, Ed, so we don’t have to.
Ditto. My thoughts exactly.
OTOH, robots will need a philosophy when they take over, right? So it’s all good.~
Verdon’s thinking his maunderings amount to “ontology” is like Elon Musk thinking himself “an evolutionary pinnacle:” ego-driven wish-casting in its purest form.
“Dystopianist manifesto” and “self-imploding,” otoh…
And this is why it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. He sounds like another twisted incel to me.
Mark 10:25-25.5?
ELON at the rally for his chosen Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate:
https://bsky.app/profile/annabower.bsky.social/post/3llnhb6qqmc2b
March 30, 2025 at 11:49 PM
I’d prefer keeping the Fed and losing President Musk, The Felon Guy, and all their associates.
I’m assuming they never took a biology class in HS or in college. (Or if they did, they got a D at best.)
If they want to populate the universe (good luck with that), they should be designing spaceships and space stations.
Never forget these folks were lib-owning with so called “Rolling Coal” not too long ago, and now their hero is an EV manufacturer? That saying about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds, might actually have it backwards?
Serious question though, if they think “consciousness” is the height of intelligence, what’s that saying about their lizard brains? A.K.A., the “subconscious”? Because that’s what seems to drive these folks, to distraction. That’s why they are projecting all the time, they can’t help it.
Wasn’t this all revealed in a Marvel comic book in the ’90s?
Perhaps, but should you really minimize the damage being done to tha country by framing as mere cartoon hijinks?
I think it’s kinda adorable how far-right techies convince themselves that government-enforced capitalism is the Natural Order that follows from evolution; and that the ONLY thing that prevents us from living in a utopia is anyone trying to get in the way of Nature. So humans are good if they’re allowed to do anything they want to make money since that’s natural and it’s unnatural and wrong for humans to interfere with that.
But then this clown completely undermines his point by saying that cooperation among humans is a GOOD thing; since it’s a meta-consciousness if people work together for a common goal. Like, yeah dude. Cooperation has an evolutionary advantage, even in the animal kingdom that has no understanding of capitalism at all. Evolution is the survival of the fittest, not the strongest. A species that cooperates is more fit than one that doesn’t cooperate. An unarmed human alone is NOT the top of the food chain and would struggle to survive anywhere on earth. That’s why we form societies because they obviously have an advantage.
But once you accept that cooperation is good, then you realize that society requires a balancing act between the needs of society and the needs of individuals. And that capitalism isn’t the Natural Order, it’s an unnatural system designed to reward people based on their access to capital; not natural abilities. So a guy who was born rich and buys property with debt can live the life of a millionaire despite having no talent or abilities. There’s nothing natural or helpful about that.
I am reminded of something I wrote almost 50 years ago.
“I sense a message written in the stars,
a wisp of timid hope, a hint of wars.
The text was clear; the message was succinct.
Co-operate, or else become extinct.”
The hope is getting thinner and the hint ever stronger.
It is kind of touching, that grasping for understanding in a universe beyond the grasp of brains evolved for vastly different uses.
I’m shocked at the ignorance of the thousands of years of thinking about these issues to no avail. Or maybe it’s just indifference. Or maybe the desperation is the need to convince themselves of their superiority.
Pie in the sky mumbo-jumbo, Mr. Verdon—the Universe gives exactly the same amount of fucks about us as viruses do: zero.
Accelerationists bring renewal the way crocuses sprouted in post-WWII Hiroshima. It’s not a designed output. It’s happenstance. The sociopathic destruction is the design feature.
Verdon’s a nut. His manifesto sounds like a plea for funding from the John Birch Society.
His notion of utility, for example, anthropomorphizes events to give them purpose they don’t have. He seems to have adopted the 19th century view of natural selection as proceeding toward a defined goal – the creation of humans – and not a branching bush of adaptation and differential survival in changing localized environments. Verdon would release the virus of unregulated capitalism and, in imitation of RFK Jr, let it run wild.
This is kind of like phrenology. A bunch of postulates set up to ostensibly explain how the bumps on our skulls govern why things are the way they are. Ultimately and concisely, it’s bullshit.
The phrase “civilizational intelligence” is an oxymoron. Reading it made “Curtis Yarvin,” another moron, pop into my head. These guys believe they can snow the rest of us–not just JD Vance–with random chains of multisyllabic abstractions. Well, this IS their day.
I wonder how they truly feel about their Ketamine-saddled high priest serving as avatar? His manifest stupidity, the Sargasso Sea of his so-called “ideas,” and the failure (whether yet acknowledged or not) of his benighted quests seem destined to doom this “philosophy” to some dustheap, whether history’s or capitalism’s or both.
Thank you, Ed, for braving this idiocy and bringing the receipts.
I did my best to interpret the language in Verdon’s manifesto, but terms like civilizational utility and dynamically morphs don’t mean anything to me. They feel like the jargon of a 1950s Sci-Fi novel, the kind of thing you’re supposed to intuit and move on with the story.
Ed, Those terms don’t mean anything to you because they don’t mean anything AT ALL!
I grew up reading 1950s and 60s science fiction. (Harlan Ellison was my idol.) I don’t remember any of those writers using phrases like that, except as parody. The guys your post is about wouldn’t know parody if it split the atom in their hypothalamus.
I grew up reading hard SF in the 60s (my father subscribed to Astounding/Analog, and I read it for more than 50 years), and I see that stuff as marketing language, with zero meaning. The kind of thing where the marketing guys say “yeah, we can do that” before talking with the people who will actually have to do it.
A theory that says “Western democracy is a bust and ought to be replaced” because that would be better for capitalism should logically be arguing for more and better democracy as the replacement. History has provided us with a wealth of natural experiments to measure how capitalism performs under different systems of government. It thrives in democracies and withers under the corrupt, directed economies of authoritarians.
One way that Democrats could better appeal to Republican and independent voters is to message how Trump-Musk actions are not just assaults on democracy, but on capitalism. Hammer home the point that Trump and the tech bro accelerationists are attacking core conservative values.
Interesting thoughts. I bet Verdon didn’t think of this.
Verdon’s manifesto is only one degree of separation from Derek Thompson’s and Ezra Klein’s new book, Abundance, evidently written for the left.
I don’t think “the left” pays much attention to either of those guys.
No, we haven’t, and now I wish I had because they’re winning with this stuff. Or at least they’re being dragged along by the winners.
Klein is a radical centrist. But the right has gone so extreme, even center appears left.
Ed wrote: “Turns out a bunch of them are poisons that interfere with our endocrine systems, kill bees and pollute the Gulf of Mexico. That doesn’t seem at all intelligent.”
Yeah..polluted the Gulf of Mexico so bad it’s now named the Gulf of America. Polluting and changing the name isn’t very intelligent.
“Move fast and break things” is the primary tactic of a smash and grab crew rampaging through a jewelry store.
Old wisdom is practice slow to go fast, something experience has validated for me.
Musk and all these techbros think they are Prometheus, heroic firebringers with forethought, when they are actually Epimetheus opening Pandora’s Box with only after thought as consolation.
I just read a news story about rich “biohacker” Bryan Johnson holding “Don’t Die Summits.” Pay him money and he’ll show you “hacks” to make you live forever.
I’ve come to hate the words “hack” and “wellness.”
I’m expecting to hear about one or more of them getting a fatal disease or poisoning themself or dying in some other way they should have expected.
Verdon’s takes on England’s work are garbage because England’s works are garbage. Ok…maybe garbage is a little harsh but he’s got 20 years of “published papers,” none contain any actual research, co-authors exclusively with AI researchers, references his own nonsensical works, never fails to compare himself to the “next darwin” and reads as well as Helena Blavatsky’s root-race theories of human evolution and development. He’s running Yarvin’s playbook on counterfeiting profundity via confabulation.
He got entropy wrong, energy wrong, and thermodynamics wrong 15 years ago and has never bothered to investigate further. Just auto include your past garbage as present fact. “Asteroid cores learn and remember patterns of drives experienced by forces that propel them from equilibrium and are capable of memory, behavior and computation.” Confabulation.
That line about asteroids sounds like homeopathy: water remembers what was in it even if it’s been diluted so there might possibly be one molecule of whatever in it. Which is nonsense.
From the “manifesto”, the nonsense pops out pretty clearly:
If one has “faith” in the “will of the universe”, then why does one need to (or believe that one can) “accelerate” this naturally occurring process?
Not much sense to be found, but plenty of arrogance and marketing copy for greedy investors.
Lots of buzzwords, not much substance. Marketing, yeah.
Speed up. Go fast. Why though? Yarvin’s plan in place:
https://keeptrack.substack.com/p/the-philosophy-behind-doge-curtis