| > If all physical processes are subservient to a thermodynamical "telos", how could any manifestation of free will emerge? Not even going to get into how problematic it is to cite conciousess as a fundamental goal of when we cannot even assess its existence in other beings. Agreed, this is a point which I don't think is empirically backed as rigorously as the rest of e/acc. Consciousness preservation is a side effect of the currently most successful form of life (humans) also evidently having consciousness. > What? Cannot be stoped? How could humanity possibly play any role in an unstoppable process? I take issue with the claim of "cannot be stopped". Certainly the extinction of humanity would result in capitalistic acceleration ceasing. But we'd simply be knocked a few levels down the emergence ladder. Darwinistic acceleration would continue to proceed on a biological level, eventually begetting a species with the ability to accelerate on shorter time-scales (intelligence) and across larger spatial scales (culture). I'd say that humanity doesn't play a role, but is rather an instrument of this acceleration process. > Surely no one can deny capitalism to be the result of specific choices in human history? Hence why we can concieve alternatives to capitalism and can very well choose them over capitalism. I don't think capitalism is necessarily the global maximum of economic systems for thermodynamic acceleration, but it is certainly the most effective system in existence at the moment. We can conceive of alternatives, but if a subset of humans were to choose them, historical precedent suggests that they would be out-accelerated by capitalism. > Can? How could it not if the claim is that it's unstoppable? Concisouness again? Given long enough time, it will. But it might need multiple reboots and bumps down the emergence ladder if we fuck up. You do bring up some great points about agency vs instrumentality that I'd like to think longer about though. |