Appendix to The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

My half agreeing, half disagreeing response to Marc Andreessen

Generally speaking, technology, progress, economic growth, and increased productivity rates are good for the world, for societies, and for human beings. Without those things, we’d be much worse off. To the extent that this is the main thesis of Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto, I agree with it.

I know some people disagree here, but their arguments usually conflate the question of how the world is — and whether it is now better than it was — with questions of how they wish it were or how it could have been had we taken a different path forward. Mixing both is a categorical mistake that must be avoided.

The world is better than it was at pretty much any earlier point in history, for virtually everyone (broadly speaking and setting aside circumstantial events, like the ongoing conflict between Palestina and Israel). Questions about how the world should be manifest an important conversation but one that is, I think, independent of the debate-starting piece that Andreessen published, which is more a draft of how we should continue building our civilization by looking back and applying what has worked for us so far.

We surely don’t move forward at once, like an equal, uniform, monolithic society, or to the same degree across countries or social classes (or other possible classifications we may use), but we do move forward anyway. All of us. If we zoom out far enough, technology is and has always been indisputably a big factor in that gradual improvement.

However, there’s another view of technological progress that isn’t explicitly expressed in Andreessen’s essay — one that is reasonably left out as the piece is a manifesto but that I think techno-optimists should consider anyway.

If I interpreted the arguments correctly, I think Andreessen is laying out the reasons why we should be optimistic about technology being the main force to make the world and our lives better over time and to infinity. At the same time, I believe it is uncontroversial that not every instance of progress or technology is a force that acts purely to increase the well-being of humans (and all life on Earth) either directly or indirectly and however we measure it.

Technology is a game of trade-offs.

We don’t have to look further than generative AI but there are many more examples spread throughout history. Every AI model that comes out is a promise of productivity enhancement as well as a death sentence for many writers’ and artists’ livelihoods. It’s a hint of a future of commoditized intelligence, which, like the internet before, could level out the playing field, and also, just like the internet, it could inadvertently become a source of distraction and shallow entertainment, killing productive gains in the process.

For any change that we create and embrace, including — and especially — those that are the consequence of technological inventions, there’s an opportunity cost hidden in the futures we don’t pursue. Or do we truly think that a different intelligent species somewhere else far away at the ends of the universe would have gone the exact path we’ve gone through?

We encounter trade-offs along our way and the ones we accept draw an idiosyncratic trajectory that defines our species. Building better weapons is not a universal law and we’ve been doing it forever. Some think AGI is the panacea without an opportunity cost. It is, they believe, the Golden Path to our brightest future. But, what if they fail to achieve it? What if they are wrong?

AGI is still an abstract idea, so even if we do get there and it turns out to be the key to a post-scarcity society, the opportunity cost of the trade-offs we’ve taken has been present at every step of our way here.

Socrates thought writing was a lesser form of thinking that would lead us astray: “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves but by means of external marks.” As Ezra Klein remarks, it was for the better that we didn’t listen to Socrates on this and writing lived on: “I think the trade-off here was worth it — I am, after all, a writer — but it was a trade-off. Human beings really did lose faculties of memory we once had.”

A techno-optimist may fixate on the fact that writing was a net win for humanity and no one would argue because it was. This is repeated throughout history for so many innovations that it becomes apparent that anyone who isn’t a techno-optimist doesn’t really know that much about the history of technology. However, that story isn’t necessarily true for every technological innovation. Not all are net positive.

We can be glad about the advancements that improved our world and still not forget those that didn’t, even if we are much better off overall. Those failures exist.

This is a rather important conversation in the digital age of the internet, smartphones, social media, and generative AI. I think modern capitalism makes possible unprecedented economic growth but also generates collateral damage in the form of misaligned incentives (among other things).

Those potentially harmful incentives matter because humans aren’t uniform beings; different inputs make different parts of us react. A technology purposefully designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, like Facebook, will satisfy some parts of us but may be deeply detrimental to other parts. Is Facebook, being optimized for engagement instead of well-being, a technological innovation we should be optimistic about?

Sometimes the trade-off appears in the use and applications of the technology, as is the case of nuclear energy. Other times, like social media, it’s inherent to the very design and even the motivation behind the innovation in the first place. None of this is black or white.

Finally, I deeply believe the trade-offs we’ve accepted so far have been overall net positive. That makes me a techno-optimist. But I also believe that may not always be the case. There’s no universal law that makes it so. Technology hasn’t been mostly beneficial because it defaults to that but because of decisions we’ve made together about it — and also decisions we’ve made despite it, or even against it. Sometimes progress is correcting a bad decision made in the name of technology.

At every step of the way the stakes increase because technology becomes more powerful over time. Two thousand years ago we had swords and spears and now we have intercontinental missiles and hydrogen bombs that can wipe out an entire city. We must never forget that the same tools that move us forward could make our path diverge from the destination we want if we don't make the right decisions. And those aren't always evident or straightforward.

The case of modern AI is a good example of this. It’s not trivial to know if it will accelerate our way toward our goals (like “living in the stars,” as Andreessen says) or instead accelerate our distancing from them by making us more distracted and unproductive, for instance, or worse.

That’s where the “optimist” part of “techno-optimist” does the heavy lifting: They (I don’t want to say “we” for this sentence) believe that technology and progress and economic growth just move us faster toward our goals without really considering the possibility that they may steer our civilization away from them (that’s without mentioning that “our civilization” isn’t monolithic either). Solarpunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk sci-fi scenarios, which are theoretically possible futures in principle, all are depictions of high-tech worlds. Still, not all of them are filled with optimism about the technology that could birth them into existence.

Can we ensure we are heading toward a good future without acknowledging the trade-offs that our technological choices present all the time? The things we don’t do; the things we lose? Where we want to go is not a matter of simply looking at where technology and progress are taking us with unbounded optimism — our destiny is made of a chain of conscious decisions, both individual and collective, that we make every step of the way.

Technology, progress, and productivity growth aren’t a yes-or-no question, as Andreessen seems to portray them to be in the manifesto, but a yes-or-no plus a what/who/how question. For me, it’s a yes — then we will see.

We can agree that these forces are civilization drivers and are paramount for humanity to improve its collective well-being. We can agree that stagnation and degrowth are “bad ideas”, but do we agree on the details? Do we agree on the goals? Do we agree on the path? At any given point, we can make different choices. The possibilities within the adjacent possible don't make up a straight line; they draw instead a labyrinth of many-doored rooms. Which doors we open is a choice. Which doors we cross matters.

I'm a techno-optimist — and I identify with that more now than ever before, even if I recognize the drawbacks of AI and its social and cultural repercussions. I believe technology has brought (and will bring) a lot of good things for the world, society, and human beings. But I don’t forget, and you shouldn’t either, that we build our destiny as humanity with the decisions we collectively make on our way there and none of those is, in practice, a good-or-bad dichotomy.

Let me end as well with the words of David Deutsch that Andreessen quotes. I ask you to realize how they also fit rather well with the take I’ve expressed here:

We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.