I'm sorry, that's how a interpreted
especially in light of previous discussions of language/communication.
I see. I wasn't implying that a receiver is necessary at all; I merely meant that calling them "sound waves" exposes the acculturation already present in your language. If you use this term when talking to something (which does anticipate a receiver), then it stands to reason that you anticipate a creature that will understand what you mean by "sound" (or "wave" for that matter).
Well of course we can keep it in the back of our minds "lolz we might just be in the Matrix", but it's not necessary to drag it up every time the empirical approach brings up something we don't like. Better first to attack any weakness in the particular studies than to resort to a Matrix-critique/defense.
I think the "Matrix" argument is a simplistic version of it. The Wachowski Bros actually admit to borrowing directly from Jean Baudrillard's
Simulation and Simulacra for that movie; but their representation is a vulgar version of it. In the introduction to that book, Baudrillard writes:
"It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory -
precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours.
The desert of the real itself."
The Wachowskis were clearly inspired by this passage, even borrowing terminology from it ("Welcome to the desert of the real..."); but Baudrillard is not suggesting we're in some simulated computer program. In the world of The Matrix, there is something behind the mask. There is a veritable wasteland of human history - war, violence, and death, a stormy realm of pure earth and stone where nothing exists except machines and the manipulated shells of human bodies.
Baudrillard would laugh at this, because in his version there's nothing behind the "mask"; in fact, the mask isn't a mask. When he says that simulacra precede the real, he means that we are already born into a world of inscription and language. There's no getting behind the signs and simulacra, no hope of discerning an original specimen, organism, or material. Everything is always-already tainted. It has nothing to do with an actual conspiracy to blind us to reality, and everything to do with our failure to distinguish between the two.
The reason for this failure is simple: representation assigns categorizes that do not subsist in the real, but will always appear to subsist for linguistic organisms. Our classifications and namings will never succeed entirely. Hence Deleuze & Guattari's, and Land's,
anti-representationalism.
So the abandoning of caution you are referring to is accelerationism? If the D&G approach is correct, then "caution" concerning accelerationism is pointless anyway. We are merely the tools of tools.
A longer time preference means reducing the privilege of today over tomorrow, which is manifested by foregoing consumption now so that you may either have it to consume tomorrow, or if done enough, you will have saved enough to create higher order goods, or capital goods, etc. (those are not necessarily the same thing).
Material technology at this point are higher order goods and require capital goods - so Austrian (and probably classical in general) economics explains how humans enable the production of technology and accelerationism disagrees with the classical telos in favor of technologically directed end.
Well, accelerationism has burgeoned into different schools of though; some Marxist, some neoreactionary. Land has distanced himself from this in recent posts (I think), but it still bleeds through sometimes.
Accelerationism itself isn't throwing caution to the wind; but Land's suggestion - "eat it all today because tomorrow it might belong to the other team" - seems to contradict longer time preference. It seems to forego the symbiotic possibility in favor of simply encouraging humans to pursue all ends without second thought.
Pulling this over here: I don't see any similarity in subject matter.
Presumably, African Americans are descended (or the majority of them are) from someone who had something taken from them in the past. This was never remedied, and its ramifications are clearly a partial cause of contemporary social conditions.
EDIT:
Not to derail anything, but Ein, could you recommend a few essential texts on speculative realism? The movement (if it can even be called that; I know Brassier despises the tag, haha) has interested me for a while, but I'd like to get around to exploring some primary texts and whatever commentary has been done on them.
Good to see you back around here!
Quentin Meillassoux's
After Finitude kicked off the movement. I believe Meillassoux is as equally dismissive of the term, however; whereas Brassier has actually spoken about it, Meillassoux has chosen to simply remain silent. But his book is very good, very short, and very accessible. Not a sentence is wasted.
Other than that, Brassier's book,
Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction is really interesting although ultimately misdirected. Even he has noted this; it basically rehashes a lot of disparate arguments and draws them together very well, but doesn't make much of an original point.
One very original and innovative thinker who has been lumped in with the bunch is Manuel DeLanda. I've read his book
Philosophy and Simulation, which is good; but he's more well known for his book on Assemblage Theory, which draws from Deleuze and Guattari (who seem to be pretty influential overall in the movement).
There's a collection of essays called
The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism & Realism. Meillassoux and Brassier have some essays in it, as do several other contemporary thinkers who are skeptical of the movement, so it provides a nice overview of the pros and cons. DeLanda has a really good essay in this collection. And even better, it's available online open-access:
http://re-press.org/books/the-speculative-turn-continental-materialism-and-realism/
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