Comment by ajsutter on What's the deal with Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)? · 2023-10-09T03:25:38.035Z · LW · GW

"Teach more faster to younger": We have had such a time in our history before: it was called the Cold War, and especially the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. I studied physics during that era, and it was way too fast with too little reflection. Some of the spirit of that age is captured in Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics.

About the thermodynamic basis for e/acc more generally, it always interests me how people ascribe such authority to thermodynamics. The Laws of Thermodynamics are usually framed in an adiabatic regime, i.e., one where the time rate of change is very slow. The "laws" are silent about the rate of reactions. E.g., some people try to frame exhaustion of fossil fuels in thermodynamic terms, as exhaustion of "low-entropy resources," but in fact fossil fuels are renewables -- it just takes a very long time.

Rates of reactions are covered by kinetics, not thermodynamics. I haven't yet seen any e/acc discussion framed in terms of kinetics. Here, too "faster" is not necessarily desirable. In chemistry, too-fast kinetics in an energy-releasing reaction can literally blow up in your faces. I suspect the same will be true at a metaphorical level: "explosions" of creative "energy," too,  often have unforeseen and unwelcome results.