Effective Obfuscation

newsletter.mollywhite.net Effective obfuscation

Silicon Valley's "effective altruism" and "effective accelerationism" only give a thin philosophical veneer to the industry's same old impulses.

Molly White is best known for shining a light on the silliness and fraud that are cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3. This essay may be a sign that she's shifting her focus to our sneerworthy friends in the extended rationalism universe. If so, that's an excellent development. Molly's great.

Technology @beehaw.org

robyoung @beehaw.org

1y ago

Effective obfuscation

newsletter.mollywhite.net /p/effective-obfuscation

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For example, the inaugural Substack post defining effective accelerationisms’s “principles and tenets” name-drops the “Jarzynski-Crooks fluctuation dissipation theorem”
To echo a comment from old!SneerClub: That's not a thing. There are three separate but related ideas (the Crooks fluctuation theorem, the Jarzynski equality and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem) which the author doesn't know are separate, because he hasn't a clue what he's talking about.
- got a link to it btw?
  
  A link to what?
  (The link in the Substack post is to the Wikipedia page for the Crooks result, disguising — intentionally or not — the fact that the writer is just smashing together science words.)
  
  the apparently original e/acc post, i think i've seen it but can't find it
  
  Seems like it's this: https://beff.substack.com/p/notes-on-eacc-principles-and-tenets
  
  I think that's it — it's the one Timnit Gebru linked to back in February which prompted the old!SneerClub discussion I mentioned, and Molly White's newsletter links to the same place.
  
  I found this earlier one, which it cites as its source:
  https://web.archive.org/web/20220602164803/https://swarthy.substack.com/p/effective-accelerationism-eacc?s=r
  All that's before that is these few guys throwing the term around on Twitter
  
  There is a fractal optimization algorithm that created life, intelligence, and every meta-organism we know.
  I'm wanking at the speed of light / wanna make a meta-fractal brain out of you
  
  (Don't torture me now) I'm having such a productive time, I'm having a QALY!
  
  @earthquake @dgerard I just read some of this and it made me substantially stupider
  
  It's important to stretch before reading their stuff. A good stretch is to find the latest fad and argue how it's an addiction.
  Then, afterwards, you need to cool off and detox. I recommend some Quake, but finding a new favorite album also works.
  
  quake is still fucking awesome and the remasters of 1 and 2 are great for an impromptu steam deck lan party

19 comments