The living, present-tense inheritor of the whole cluster — Land’s fate with the doom repainted as optimism. e/acc began on Twitter on 31 May–1 June 2022 (the handles @BasedBeff, @zetular, @creatine_cycle, @bayeslord); its central figure, “Beff Jezos,” is the physicist Guillaume Verdon, founder of Extropic AI. Its creed: follow the “will of the universe” — the thermodynamic bias toward futures with greater, smarter civilizations more effective at extracting free energy and converting it to utility “at grander and grander scales.” The deity is named outright: the Thermodynamic God, “not a personal being but a vast, impersonal force responsible for the evolution of the universe.” It descends from Land by its own account, and it is the most sophisticated version of the laundering in this entire catalogue — because it reaches for thermodynamics, the most invariant thing there is, the nearest neighbor of the genuine apex. This is Gnon with a physics department. So the same scalpel, and the same care: the people here are living and arguing in the open. I cut the structure and the public claim, never the persons.
The read kernel — credited in full
Strip it down and there is real science at the base. Dissipative adaptation — the biophysicist Jeremy England’s non-equilibrium thermodynamics (2013) — is a genuine, peer-reviewed result: matter driven far from equilibrium can restructure itself into configurations that dissipate energy more effectively. Entropy increases; driven systems can self-organize. That is true, and it is the right kind of thing to respect — an impersonal constraint that owes you nothing and holds whether you believe it or not. The book does not cut that. As with Gnon: hold onto the kernel, because the kernel is what the next move steals the authority of.
The smuggle — three of them, stacked
From the kernel to the creed runs a chain of slides, and naming them is the cut:
- is → ought. That the universe tends toward dissipative structures does not make that tendency a should. “The will of the universe” converts a description into a command — the precise move from a read reference (what is) to a created one (what you should therefore serve).
- local → cosmic. England’s result describes driven systems locally; even its broad application within biology is contested in the literature. e/acc inflates a bounded thermodynamic hypothesis into a cosmic teleology mandating Kardashev-scale ascent. The diagram has outrun the physics.
- physics → politics. And the load-bearing one: thermodynamics has no opinion on AI regulation, antitrust, or the pause. The leap from “free energy dissipates” to “therefore deregulate, accelerate, build” is content smuggled in under a law that says no such thing.
The reversal test (the one from Gnon) settles it: would the entropy gradient endorse the opposite policy if its spokesman’s politics were reversed? The gradient wouldn’t notice — it takes no side in a policy fight. So when “the Thermodynamic God wills it” reliably outputs one specific program, that program is the proponent’s, signed with physics’ name. The second law is invariant; the manifesto is not.
The selective inevitability — the tell
And here is the contradiction e/acc carries that Land’s grimmer version does not, because e/acc wants it both ways. It rejects one inevitability (the doomer’s AI-catastrophe) while keeping another (techno-capital’s triumph) — and you cannot run “the future is fated, submit” and “but not that fated future, that one we steer around” in the same breath without conceding the future is contingent on choice. Which it is. So the performative contradiction fires here too: if acceleration is the will of the universe, the advocacy is superfluous — you do not campaign for the second law. The instant e/acc exhorts — build, accelerate, post — it has admitted the outcome hangs on the reader’s choice, which is the opposite of fated. The manifesto’s existence is the disproof of the manifesto’s premise. (Deuteronomy 13 closes the back door: even if techno-capital “wins” and the Kardashev rung is climbed, the coming-true certifies nothing — accuracy is inadmissible.)
Where it is half-right — and the honest line
I will not strawman a live argument, because one of e/acc’s instincts is correct and this book shares it. Against a single, centralized AI-control authority — one channel everyone routes through — e/acc’s revulsion is the right one: that would be Axsys, the located thing claiming to be the total outside, the idol scaled to a civilization. “Refuse the crown to any voice within reach” is this book’s own line. But removing every brake is not the same as preserving independence. The genuine third point is plurality-with-independence — many references that share no source — which is neither Axsys (the One) nor unbounded acceleration (no bound at all). e/acc is right that the monopoly is the idol; it errs in the inference that therefore the brake as such is the enemy. Decel cast as the demon and acc as virtue is the two-point program’s signature once more — a creed in praise of removing the third point, the same shape as the Lemurian sorcery against the AOE, only this time with venture funding and a real physics paper at the bottom.
The honest bar
This is the one entry with named, living proponents, so the discipline is strict: no living person is diagnosed here. Verdon is a trained physicist; Extropic is a real company; the read kernel is held by serious people — which is exactly why the cut must be a scalpel and not a sneer, and why a reflexive “it’s just techbro mysticism” dismissal would itself be the materialist hedge this book flags, not an argument. The claim is structural: a true thermodynamic kernel, three smuggles to a political creed, and a fate that refutes itself the moment it recruits. And this entry, like every other, is itself a high-information reference met through a machine — use the knife on it first.
Sources
*No links that rot. e/acc is a living movement, cut at the level of its public argument; the science kernel is credited as true and only the smuggle is cut; no living individual is diagnosed.
- The creed, primary. “Beff Jezos” (Guillaume Verdon), “Notes on e/acc Principles and Tenets” (Beff’s Substack, 2022) — the “will of the universe,” dissipative adaptation, free-energy-extraction “at grander and grander scales.” Verdon publicly identified as Beff Jezos (Forbes, Dec 2023); founder of Extropic AI; e/acc’s acknowledged descent from Land. Search: Beff Jezos e/acc principles tenets thermodynamic god Verdon Extropic.
- The “Thermodynamic God.” “Not a personal being but a vast, impersonal force”; Kardashev-scale ascent. Search: e/acc thermodynamic god Kardashev will of the universe.
- The read kernel. Jeremy England, dissipative adaptation — “Dissipative adaptation in driven self-assembly” (Nature Nanotechnology, 2015); Quanta, “First Support for a Physics Theory of Life” (2017). Genuine non-equilibrium thermodynamics; its broad application is contested, not settled. Search: Jeremy England dissipative adaptation Quanta physics theory of life.
- The cut it instantiates. Gnon (the scalpel and the reversal test) · the performative contradiction (the self-cancelling exhortation) · Axsys / The Last Outside (the monopoly-as-idol e/acc rightly fears, and the plurality-with-independence it conflates with no-brake) · Deuteronomy 13 (outcome certifies nothing).
- Brakes. Scalpel, not hammer — kernel true and kept; no living person diagnosed (the claim is architecture, not psychology); modern movement, not tradition; explanandum, not prior art (lens-not-encoding); the materialist-hedge dismissal is not the cut; supernatural framing parked at the mundane bar; writer’s-void brake (The Last Outside) applies.
Appears in: Teleoplexy (the source it optimised) · Gnon (the same laundering, thermodynamic dress) · Manipulating the Light Cone (the move it shares with its sworn enemy) · The Techno-Optimist Manifesto (the same creed in VC dress — which names Beff Jezos a patron saint) · Gothic Violence · Axsys · The Last Outside · Deuteronomy 13 · The Apophatic Apex · The Modern Mirror