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Web-Only |<br>Examined Life |<br>May 27, 2026

Superhuman Fantasies

Nietzsche versus the techno-optimists

by<br>Nicholas Low

In 2023, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen released a document called “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” in which he proclaimed himself a de facto spokesman of the “effective accelerationist” movement. E/acc, as it is known in online spheres, is billed as a rejoinder to effective altruism and has gained traction in recent years among Silicon Valley technologists and the new right. The fundamental idea of e/acc is that accelerating technological development is the best way to resolve most of our cultural problems. The policy corollary is that we should therefore deregulate the tech industry, especially with respect to AI, nuclear power and nanotechnology.

But Andreessen’s manifesto is not focused on policy. Rather, it is an expression of what we might call “superhumanist” discourse. By this I mean that his proclamations largely revolve around the idea that humankind already possesses the power to become superhuman, if only we could get around a thoroughly nihilistic establishment. In a section headed “The Enemy,” he writes, “Our enemy is deceleration, de-growth, depopulation—the nihilistic wish, so trendy among our elites, for fewer people, less energy, and more suffering and death.” Nihilism is, for Andreessen, generally associated with progressivism, though he is careful not to openly avow either right- or left-wing politics. He concludes: “Our enemy is Friedrich Nietzsche’s Last Man.”

This citation is perhaps apt: Nietzsche developed his idea of the Übermensch in contrast with the “last human beings,” those who have lost the capacity to become something higher, who no longer have the energy to “give birth to a dancing star.” In another section boldly titled “Becoming Technological Supermen,” Andreessen writes: “We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology.” Later, he exhorts us to transform ourselves into such “technological supermen,” positioned against the “last men” of our time—the regulators, the experts, the ivory tower.

Who are Andreessen’s superhumans? Where will they come from? Andreessen borrows the concept of the “techno-capital machine” from accelerationist philosopher Nick Land to describe markets as “the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.” Andreessen proclaims, “We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward.” We will be transformed by a runaway growth pattern of “intelligence,” leading to a cybernetic symbiosis between human and artificial life forms. Andreessen reassures the reader that “intelligent machines augment intelligent humans, driving a geometric expansion of what humans can do.”

Andreessen isn’t alone in dreaming of transcending humanity through technology. Nick Bostrom, founder of the Oxford University “Future of Humanity Institute,” has argued that posthuman life is not only “possible” and “desirable,” through the use of nanobots, AI or other technologies, but that “it could be very good for us to become posthuman.” Yuval Noah Harari, popular medieval-historian-turned-prophet-of-doom, predicts with some trepidation that in this century “the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus.” Ray Kurzweil, Google’s bewilderingly optimistic “AI visionary,” recently predicted that by 2045 we will have achieved “singularity,” where human and artificial intelligence will be so integrated that “we will … become superhuman.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the modern technological superman is most often associated with the archetype of the Silicon Valley mogul. On a podcast in 2022, Andreessen described Elon Musk as the closest thing we have to a Nietzschean Übermensch today. (Other candidates floated on the episode include Trump and Kanye.) What Andreessen admires about Musk is his dictatorial approach to running his companies, which he likens favorably to Nietzsche’s conception of “master morality.” This kind of man isn’t bogged down by regulations, bureaucratic structures or the petty concerns of the ethics department; he simply pursues, unrestrainedly, what he thinks...