> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://d-acc-research-group.gitbook.io/d-acc-reading-group/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://d-acc-research-group.gitbook.io/d-acc-reading-group/introduction.md).

# Introduction

The philosophy of d/acc, or defensive/decentralization/differential/democratic acceleration, was proposed by Vitalik Buterin in a November 2023 blog post titled [My techno-optimism](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html). The post was a response to Marc Andreesen's [Techno-Optimist Manifesto](https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/), a capstone piece of the long brewing "effective accelerationism" movement.\[1]

The intention of **critical d/acc** is to investigate this philosophy with special attention to the nuances and possibilities of its component parts. This is based off of the premise that the ethical intuitions behind d/acc are *epistemically antifragile*, meaning that interrogating, deconstructing and elaborating its categories on an open basis will embolden and make stronger its core insights. In this respect, this project hopes to offer d/acc as a prefigurative instance of its own pluralistic aspirations. 

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\[1] Both pieces should be contextualized in an atmosphere of intellectual movements like [accelerationism](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/08/what-accelerationism), [effective altruism](https://www.effectivealtruism.org), [transhumanism](https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/values), [xenofeminism](https://www.versobooks.com/products/806-the-xenofeminist-manifesto), etc., all of which seemed to have special immediacy in '22-'23 in the wake of the sudden ascendance of OpenAI with DALL-E and ChatGPT (backgrounded by the collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried empire and the escalating persistence of the climate crisis).