The Fae/acc Manifesto

It is a popular passtime of humans, since the advent of mass literacy, to write manifestos, calls to action, and the like. Especially in the age of the internet, when your potential audience is measured in the billions. And especially if you believe you have Something Important To Say, That Will Change The World. Your mileage may vary on whether or not this manifesto falls into that category; for the most part it is a collection and ordering of various streams of thought, partly inspired by and reacting to the plethora of “[x]/acc” manifestos and micromovements, about where humanity stands and should stand in the universe. Remember that acceleration is not always a change in speed; it can also be a change in direction…

1. A sufficiently complex process is indistinguishable from a person

“I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with

definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."… ...Instead of attempting such a

definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is

expressed in relatively unambiguous words.” -- Alan Turing

The Turing Test asks the question, “can a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence make a human think it is a human?” Or, as is commonly asked, does it matter if it *is* a person, so long as we *experience* it as a person? Many people who interact with current AI models experience them as less objects than subjects. For much of human history, before the so-called “disenchantment” of the world, the world at large was experienced as a community of persons, rather than humans as the only beings and the rest of the world as mere objects.

The Turing Test was developed in the context of artificial intelligence, but can be applied far more generally than that: just as a sufficiently advanced computer system can be experienced as a person, so a sufficiently complex process can be experienced as a person. That is not to say persons as humans are, or that we can meaningfully communicate with them the same way we communicate with each other. It is to say that from our perspective they can be considered to have their own inscrutable wants and decisions, and our interactions with them must be more of a negotiation than a dictation.

It is not to say that they are conscious, either. However, many people believe that a sufficiently advanced computer could support consciousness, and we know human brains support consciousness. Why should we rule out the possibility that other complex computational processes, such as a forest, are also conscious persons? Not necessarily of a form that we are familiar with, but nonetheless consciousness of a kind.

2. The world is old, very old. And also young.

“Slow growth is plenty fast.” -- Robin Hanson

13.7 billion years for the universe. 4.5 billion years for the Earth, with another billion expected before the sun becomes too bright for life to continue existing here. Spans of time far greater than a human lifespan, far greater than our existence as a species even with an expansive definition… and yet, far shorter than the predicted lifespan for most of the stars in our galaxy. We have plenty of time to explore it. We’re not going to go extinct because it took us ten thousand years to launch a starship, or because growth ended up going quadratic instead of exponential. Slow growth is plenty fast.

3. Our plans are measured in centuries.

“Our plans are measured in centuries” – Reverend Mother Mohiam

Large projects typically use a 30-40 year time horizon, and this is far too long for a lot of people. Yet, despite this, it is only a third to a half of a human lifespan. We outlive our plans. If human life expectancy continues to increase, there is a good chance a child born today will still be around in a centuries time. Of course, a newborn is not in a position to make decisions -- but their parents will be. If you truly care for your child, don’t be myopic about their future.

4. If you want abundance, use what is abundant.

"My favourite three questions are, What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former? Actually, I'm also fond of What kind of person am I?, but that one isn't often directly relevant to decision making on a day-to-day basis." -- Luminosity!Bella

Abundance begets abundance. There are things we have in abundance, that even a civilisation rising from the ashes of industrial society in ten thousand years time will have in abundance, even as the most valuable ores and accessible fossil fuels have been mined to oblivion. These are sunlight, water, earth, and air, along with stone and wind. All of these but wind are also available off this earth as well in vast abundance. Added to these are materials that are grown or created by humans, that can last a long time if cared for – wool, wood, linen, glass, even steel (an unexpected inclusion perhaps in a manifesto referencing the Fae), allowing stocks to build up over time. It behoves a civilisation aiming to thrive in the very long term to base itself on that which it will not deplete.

5. Humans are (ought to be) mutualists

“We are as gods and may as well get good at it.” -- Stewart Brand

Humanity impacts the world. We impact the world so much that many people consider us to define a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene. But that impact does not have to be a negative one. At our best, we bring life to deserts, create forests where there is naught but rock, build microclimates that sustain other species. Even our transport infrastructure need not leave an ugly scar across the land -- canals are a form of transport that improve the land they go through, both for us and for the species we share the land with.

We are not above nature, nature is not here for us to use as we wish for whatever purposes we have, but we are a very important part of it. A keystone species. This is our purpose, and perhaps if we follow the golden path we will take this purpose with us off our planet of birth and bring life to other worlds, extending the reach of our biosphere beyond Earth. Fundamentally, we are ecosystem engineers and may as well get good at it.

6. Don’t be afraid of pruning

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” -- Edward Abbey

What differentiates cancers from the organisms they derive from and parasitise is that the cancer cells refuse to die. To avoid this, as well as other health problems, our bodies will actively hunt down and destroy cells which are not functioning as they are supposed to. Pruning is essential in all things, whether bodies or gardens or trees or organisations, to remove what is dead, diseased, or deranged, and stop it from harming the whole. In effect, the question Marie Kondo famously asked, “Does this spark joy?”, is a fundamental question for everything that seeks to grow and survive. Growth that does not spark joy, that does not improve our lives, is not a moral good. Our growth must be in a direction that is compatible with life.