# My techno-optimism

<https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html>

- Host: [vitalik.eth.limo](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/vitalik.eth.limo/)
- Saved: December 4, 2023 (2023-12-05T02:09:43Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6218f20fd803/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6218f20fd803.json

## What Jamie wrote

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum blockchain, with his own take on "techno-optimism". This whole thread was started with [Marc Andreessen's manifesto](https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/) and branches out with a number of critiques and replies.

I liked reading Buterin's view, and how he thinks through it. His general push toward defensive technology is interesting.

> Across the board, I see far too many plans to save the world that involve giving a small group of people extreme and opaque power and hoping that they use it wisely. And so I find myself drawn to a different philosophy, one that has detailed ideas for how to deal with risks, but which seeks to create and maintain a more democratic world and tries to avoid centralization as the go-to solution to our problems. **This philosophy also goes quite a bit broader than AI, and I would argue that it applies well even in worlds where AI risk concerns turn out to be largely unfounded**. I will refer to this philosophy by the name of **d/acc**.
> 
> The "d" here can stand for many things; particularly, **defense**, **decentralization**, **democracy**and **differential**. First, think of it about defense, and then we can see how this ties into the other interpretations.

Reading through this brought many ideas from Taleb's Anti-Fragile to my mind as well. Investing in defensive technology to make people and society more resilient.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT272: Weekly Thing 272 / Escape, Fuzzy, Melodrip](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/272/), Featured

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html