gom_jabbar
gom_jabbar on Hacker News
> Any class that even says a little about the history of NNs will talk about Rosenblatt and the Perceptron.
Sure. I think it starts to get more interesting when the influences that Rosenblatt explicitly cites in his seminal Perceptron paper (e.g. Hayek) become part of the discussion (which rarely happens in my experience).
Yes, Rosenblatt is another good example. I recently looked deeper into the development of the perceptron and it's absolutely fascinating.
Haven't heard about the universal subspace hypothesis yet, so I appreciate the digression.
As mentioned in the comments, this is essentially Nick Land's vision, which he has been developing for over 30 years. If anyone is interested in exploring this topic in depth, I have a research project on it:
https://retrochronic.com (The
Capital Autonomization section of the introduction is particularly relevant.)
Yes. Here's one relevant quote that touches on autonomization and secession:
> Most simply, there is the utilitarian order, in which capital establishes itself as the competitively-superior solution to prior purposes (production of human use-values), and the intelligenic order in which it accomplishes its self-escalation (mechanization, autonomization, and ultimately secession).
Nick Land (2014). Freedoom (Prelude-1a) in Xenosystems Blog. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition
> I'm genuinely curious where this all goes
Maybe toward autonomous/sovereign capital with no humans in the loop, not even at the level of (asset) ownership.
Made me think of Mark Fisher's
Y2K Positive text:
> At the Great Midnight at the century's end, signifying culture will flip over into a number-based counterculture, retroprocessing the last 100 years. Whether global disaster ensues or not, Y2K is a singularity for cybernetic culture. It's time to get Y2K positive.
Mark Fisher (2004). Y2K Positive in Mute.
Nietzsche argued that genius is more frequent than we think, but that something else is missing for its realization ("the
five hundred hands"):
> In the realm of genius, might the “Raphael without hands” — the term understood in its broadest sense — be not the exception, but the rule? — Genius is perhaps not so rare after all: but the five hundred hands it needs to tyrannize the καιρὁς, “the right time” — to seize chance by the scruff of the neck! [0]
[0] http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/JGB-274 (translated from German)
The interesting thing is that, for the "Father of Accelerationism" (Nick Land), AI Doomerism (doom for humans, at least for human identity) and Accelerationism (which for Land is just another label for capitalism: 'The label "accelerationism" exists because "capitalismism" would be too awkward.' [0]) are not opposed at all. And capitalism does not need to get elected.
[0] Nick Land (2018). Outsideness: 2013-2023, Noumena Institute, p. 71.
Expected outcome. Nick Land and the CCRU have explored how capitalism operationalizes science fiction (distilled in the concept of
Hyperstition). Viewed through this lens, prices encode "distributed SF narratives." [0]
[0] Nick Land (1995). No Future in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, Urbanomic, p. 396.
The real transition would be from human-owned capital to self-owned capital. You are right that current capabilities and autonomy don't allow for that yet.
If you're only interested in his ideas, The Swerve summarizes them on pages 185-199 (1st edition).
Agreed. Even assuming that most people aren't deeply familiar with his philosophy, it's still nice for a culture to have something like a celebrity philosopher.
Absolutely. One of my favorite books about the power of books is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011) by Stephen Greenblatt. It tells the story of the rediscovery of Lucretius's poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), which was assumed lost.
German book culture is great! When he was in Karlsruhe to profile Peter Sloterdijk, The New Yorker reporter Thomas Meaney seemed surprised by it:
"Over the summer, ordinary Germans who spotted his [Peter Sloterdijk] books in my hands engaged me in conversation on trains, in coffee shops, at universities, and in bookshops." [0]
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/a-celebrity-ph...
This reminds me of Peter Sloterdijk describing books as "bewusstseinserweiternde Drogen" (mind-expanding drugs) and "Waffen" (weapons) in his working library. [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/Wn5EgkuQb5U?t=293 (4:53)
> It just needs one player to do it, so everyone has to be able to do it. I'd love to hear a different scenario.
Other players just need to assume that one player might do it in the future. This virtual future scenario has a causal effect on the now. The overall dynamic is that of an arms race (which radically changes what a player is).
I think assuming human agency (building technocapitalism, correcting course) or the possibility to escape capitalism and its consequences (in bunkers), underestimates what capitalism is.
Mark Fisher is excellent. It will be interesting to see if his claim that the human face is required for capitalism's functioning will hold (does not look like it).
Exactly. He recently said the following in an interview:
"AI safety and anti-capitalism [...] are at least strongly analogous, if not exactly the same thing." [0]
[0] Nick Land (2026). A Conversation with Nick Land (Part 2) by Vincent Lê in Architechtonics Substack. Retrieved from vincentl3.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-nick-land-part-a4f
Yes, I was just about to bring this up as well. One could argue that they were simply too early. It will be interesting to watch things like ERC-8004.
Nick Land is arguably the most influential philosopher in SV (at least over the past 3 years). Marc Andreessen's acknowledgment of Land in his 2023
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto has brought his underground influence more to the surface.
Land's explicit anti-humanism can be repulsive to some on first encounter, but some of his ideas -- e.g. about the identity of capitalism and AI, the autonomization of capital, the technological singularity as capitalism's inherent teleology -- are interesting and can provide a very unique perspective.
It's also important to note that he tends to resonate more with creative types. Historically, these were mostly artists. Today, they are also founders (who are psychometrically similar to artists at the population level).
Great article. Have read it multiple times over the years. The predictive power of Accelerationism is perhaps even more evident now than it was in 2017.
I have always been fascinated by this interpretation (that capitalism is (retrochronic) AI), which is why I have created a research project on it:
https://retrochronic.com
Yes, this is one of the main references for Nick Land's thesis that capitalism is (retrochronic) AI.
The one you cited is from Machinic Desire (1993). Interestingly, it also appears in the relatively unknown text Shorelines from the Making People Disappear exhibition (1993):
"What appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources." [0]
[0] http://merliquify.com/artwork/exhibitions/making-people-disa... (p. 4)
Instrumental convergence is final convergence (w/o final goal divergence following instrumental convergence as assumed by Bostrom).