from Hacker News

E/acc as a religion:A Technologist's Right to Choose

by Avid_F on 11/16/24, 2:29 PM with 8 comments

• by analognoise on 11/16/24, 4:49 PM

  Just goes to show you can be very smart and very naive at the same time.

  It’s amazing that people will reach all these crazy solutions - anything to admit that we have more than enough now for everyone but that it isn’t fairly distributed.

  3 men have more wealth than 50% of America combined? Oh yes, the problem is clearly that we haven’t accelerated technology enough.

  If anything there’s a silly lack of class consciousness.

• by pirocks on 11/16/24, 4:53 PM

  I'm not seeing it explicitly stated in this post but there is an important detail that other comments seem to be ignoring/assuming. There's a difference between a class that requires students "to consider that the idea that relentless progress that steamrolls all other concerns might not be the right way to think about progress"(from one of my sibling comments), and a class that requires students to not believe in relentless progress. Like a class that assigns an essay with the prompt "explain why building more datacenters is bad" or a class that assigns "are more datacenters good" are two very different classes. My sibling comments seem to be assuming that the later is happening. I suspect the OP thinks the former is happening.

• by orev on 11/16/24, 4:43 PM

  This is nothing more than someone complaining that they’re being required to consider that the idea of relentless innovation that steamrolls all other concerns might not be the right way to think about progress, and then contriving an idea that labeling technical progress as a religion is a way to sidestep a course requirement.

  This might seem like a profound idea to a university student who’s very technically minded, but it’s just exposing their naïveté.

  I would recommend that this person needs to spend more time exposed to non-technical pursuits to gain a better perspective on the world, instead of inventing “logical” ways to avoid such exposure. Having this requirement in the curriculum is ironically bolstered by the author’s objection to it.

• by ImPostingOnHN on 11/16/24, 4:21 PM

  This leads to an empty page at the linked blog

• by ImPostingOnHN on 11/16/24, 4:45 PM

  > Introducing a subjective, belief-driven course as a mandatory requirement within an otherwise objective, fact-based program undermines the integrity of the curriculum and its focus on evidence-based learning.

  This seems like a subjective belief, but the entire position described at the blog depends on it being objectively true.

  Having said that, the complaint amounts to 'I object to having to sit through a class with a guest speaker I didn't like hearing', so not terribly consequent. I'm guessing it was like 1 hour out of a 168-hour week? This honestly seems like good workforce training in attending a meeting you don't want to attend.

  I'm not sure where the author gets the idea that we should be exempted from a course because we don't like hearing something said during one of the classes, religious or otherwise? Like, I am having trouble understanding why the below assertion is true:

  > individuals [should] have the freedom to opt out of mandatory courses that do not align with their professional focus or are antithetical to their personal positions

  On another level, the choice is still there anyways: the degree plans of most colleges and universities are available, and we can each choose to apply for degrees with which we agree. The one from the article seems to want its degree to include some education on sustainability. I doubt every college or university in the world does.

• by ashton314 on 11/16/24, 4:41 PM

  A belief does not a religion make. I am religious; I think it would be very bad to try and promote something that should belong in the realm of empiricism and philosophy. If we admit “e/acc” to religion, should we admit e.g. particular views on climate activism as different denominations of a climate religion? No!

  > ensuring that individuals have the freedom to opt out of mandatory courses that do not align with their professional focus or are antithetical to their personal positions. Until sustainability courses either become non-mandatory or incorporate both accelerationist and decelerationist perspectives, those who find them irrelevant should have the option to avoid them

  This comes off as whining that someone shouldn’t have to take university courses that they disagree with. That entirely misses the point of a university education.