# AI Doomer / Decel Identity labels for people who believe advanced AI development poses catastrophic or existential risk and advocate slowing down or stopping it. "Doomer" is the more common term, borrowed from general internet culture (climate doomers, economic doomers); "decel" (decelerationist) is the mirror-image counterpart to [[E-acc]] (effective accelerationism), explicitly framing the debate as a velocity argument. ## The rhetorical work The terms function differently depending on who's using them. From inside the safety community, "doomer" is sometimes worn as a badge of seriousness — "I take the risks seriously enough to accept the uncomfortable label." From outside, "doomer" is a dismissal — "this person is irrationally pessimistic, captured by science-fiction scenarios, and blocking beneficial technology." **P(doom)** — the estimated probability that AI development leads to human extinction or comparable catastrophe — has become a social signaling device in AI circles. Sharing your p(doom) (e.g., "my p(doom) is 20%") is a compressed way of declaring your position in the doomer-accelerationist spectrum. The number itself is unverifiable and unfalsifiable; its function is tribal sorting. The political significance: the doomer/accelerationist divide maps loosely (and imperfectly) onto the regulation/deregulation divide. Doomers tend to support AI regulation, compute governance, international treaties. Accelerationists tend to support deregulation, open development, market-driven safety. But the mapping is imperfect — some doomers oppose regulation (believing it's ineffective), and some accelerationists support narrow safety measures. The labels are identity markers more than policy platforms. The `/Concepts/` entry on [[AI Doomerism]] covers the intellectual history and the TESCREAL analysis. This entry focuses on the *word's* function as a sorting hat in AI discourse. ## See Also - [[E-acc]] — the opposing identity label - [[AI Doomerism]] — the concept and intellectual history - [[Superintelligence]] — the risk scenario doomers focus on - [[Alignment]] — the technical program doomerism motivates - [[Alignment Tax]] — the cost framing accelerationists use against doomers