The Techno-Optimist Manifesto makes the following claim:
“We believe in the actual Scientific Method and enlightenment values of free discourse and challenging the authority of experts.” [emphasis original]
Ironically, the rest of this diatribe is profoundly anti-scientific.
It is a rhetorical appeal to emotionality, which relies on magical thinking and literally uses the word “Enemy” to describe any of the actions and perspectives that are informed by scientific evidence of the harms done by the “techno-capital machine” (again, his words, not mine.)
“Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.
This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past – zombie ideas, many derived from Communism, disastrous then and now – that have refused to die.”
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto – “The Enemy“
He literally put “sustainable development,” “risk management,” and “tech ethics” down as The Enemy.
FTR, the “bad ideas” he is talking about here derive from: “Make observations. Make models. Test the models against the observations. Draw conclusions. Share them to check against other people’s models, observations, and conclusions. Coordinate and make sense of things. Publish your results so that they can be checked against previous observations.”
You know.
Science.