Accelerationism is interesting to me insofar as it is transparent about the fact that technology is an a-human (not in-human) force. Blind faith in the liberational potential of technology does nothing to actually fulfill this potential, but instead just furthers it's a-human qualities. The reference to the California ideology is apt.
I think that's a really good, pithy way of phrasing it.
> this kind of thinking ends up getting wrapped up in NRx and inevitably, the alt-right.
I would say that accelerationists are very closely aligned with NRx, and only tactically allied with the alt-right. I would say only tactically aligned with the alt-right because they view the alt-right as "identity politics for white people", which is fine insofar as it restricts immigration (because most of the immigrants coming to the US come from cultures that do not value personal liberty as highly as Anglosphere culture does; and do not have mean IQs as high as US whites); but the NRx and accelerationist ideal is to take all (and only) the smart people regardless of race and build a techcomm utopia.
NRx / acclerationist immigration policy would probably require scoring at least 130 on an IQ test.
The problem, of course, is that if we got where we are now by being humans, then how do we know we're far enough along to 'quit' being humans without going backwards? How do you know that 'giving up' isn't the same sort of intellectual trick that that Nazis played on themselves? How do you give up without giving up?
The problem is that there is no such thing as 'blind progression'. It will always be defined by someone or something, boxing all future progress into that person's biases. This is the same well-intentioned by inherently flawed utopian thinking as everyone else.
I would totally sign my life away to an AI as long as no one was telling me that it was a sign of 'progress'. At the very least, no one should be profiting from it
Everything else is what you get when you take "maximize intelligence" to its logical conclusion.