Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

I didn't say they couldn't. Just that if they do/could, it is always already anthropomorphic and/or possibly won't resemble anything we might call ethics.

 

[Einherjar86]

Apologies then. I was having difficulty squaring these two comments:

Ascribing ethics to algorithms is as anthropomorphic as "AI", and the values ascribed have their own issues.

I didn't say they couldn't. Just that if they do/could, it is always already anthropomorphic and/or possibly won't resemble anything we might call ethics.

Understanding that other organisms might practice some form of ethics isn't anthropomorphic. Furthermore, even if we could recognize some other organism's brand of ethics, this doesn't mean it's anthropomorphic.

Anthropomorphism is only something that we can do; it's something that we project onto others. It's quite clear to us that whales exhibit some form of communication, but we don't claim that their communication functions in the same way that human language does. We can identify these phenomena taking place in other organisms without anthropomorphizing them.

 

[Dak]

Understanding that other organisms might practice some form of ethics isn't anthropomorphic. Furthermore, even if we could recognize some other organism's brand of ethics, this doesn't mean it's anthropomorphic.

This approach seems at odds with statements like "diseases don't exist until we name them" (not that you have necessarily agreed with a statement like that). How can we call it (non-anthropomorphic) ethics, if the Other doesn't conceive of it as ethics?

Anthropomorphism is only something that we can do; it's something that we project onto others. It's quite clear to us that whales exhibit some form of communication, but we don't claim that their communication functions in the same way that human language does. We can identify these phenomena taking place in other organisms without anthropomorphizing them.

But whales wouldn't call it communication. So isn't that projection?

On a separate note, I think this thread deserves the title of "Der Stammtisch".

 

[Einherjar86]

This approach seems at odds with statements like "diseases don't exist until we name them" (not that you have necessarily agreed with a statement like that). How can we call it (non-anthropomorphic) ethics, if the Other doesn't conceive of it as ethics?

Diseases do exist. Things exist, bodies exist, organisms exist; the institutions they are (or into which they are) interpolated and appropriated as do not exist as such. What I mean is that nature exists; but "Nature" does not exist.

But whales wouldn't call it communication. So isn't that projection?

Whales can't call it communication. That doesn't mean we can't speak about it conceptually as such. Likewise, robots might not ever use the term "ethics"; but that doesn't mean we can't use the term to talk about their behavior.

Ethics and communication are both amoral, non-intentional systems. We can talk about them with regard to other organisms because we need to understand that they're already nonhuman practices. Communication is nothing more than a system of contingent rules that develop between organisms. The recursive problem that we're running into is that we're attempting to express this fact while still speaking within language. This gives us the impression that this language is ours, that this communication is for us and nothing else.

But other organisms interact, other organisms exhibit mutual relationships, other organisms transmit signals to each other.

Subtract the human from communication itself, and you can attribute it to other things; with, of course, the caveat that the communication of other organisms isn't human communication.

The same goes for ethics.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value - and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.

It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.

Ethics are transcendental.

 

[Dak]

Diseases do exist. Things exist, bodies exist, organisms exist; the institutions they are (or into which they are) interpolated and appropriated as do not exist as such. What I mean is that nature exists; but "Nature" does not exist.

I agree, but:

Whales can't call it communication. That doesn't mean we can't speak about it conceptually as such. Likewise, robots might not ever use the term "ethics"; but that doesn't mean we can't use the term to talk about their behavior.

Ethics and communication are both amoral, non-intentional systems. We can talk about them with regard to other organisms because we need to understand that they're already nonhuman practices. Communication is nothing more than a system of contingent rules that develop between organisms. The recursive problem that we're running into is that we're attempting to express this fact while still speaking within language. This gives us the impression that this language is ours, that this communication is for us and nothing else.

But other organisms interact, other organisms exhibit mutual relationships, other organisms transmit signals to each other.

Subtract the human from communication itself, and you can attribute it to other things; with, of course, the caveat that the communication of other organisms isn't human communication.

The same goes for ethics.

I don't think that Ethics can be treated in a similar manner to communication. Communication is a rather objective sort of action. Conversely, ethics are so abstractly malleable as to almost defy definition, and as a broad category encompass diametrically opposed views from multiple angles. Since ethics cannot really be compared to communication, I believe an argument for non-anthropomorphic ethics needs a better parallel or analogy or concrete comparison, and even then I don't see an argument for algorithmic or mechanical ethics that would nullify the statement that any such possibly conceivable ethics does not have to in any way appear to humans as Ethics.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't think that Ethics can be treated in a similar manner to communication. Communication is a rather objective sort of action. Conversely, ethics are so abstractly malleable as to almost defy definition, and as a broad category encompass diametrically opposed views from multiple angles. Since ethics cannot really be compared to communication, I believe an argument for non-anthropomorphic ethics needs a better parallel or analogy or concrete comparison, and even then I don't see an argument for algorithmic or mechanical ethics that would nullify the statement that any such possibly conceivable ethics does not have to in any way appear to humans as Ethics.

I think this is a good point; but let's think about it a bit more.

Communication is incredibly malleable. Unless you mean it's objective in the sense that it simply happens; in which case, why don't you we see ethics in this sense...?

Ethics is nothing more than a generally accepted system of rules by which a large majority of people treat or interact with each other. In many ways, ethics operates as a language game. Of course, language isn't the same as communication; but language is the manifestation of communication (in humans, at least). So maybe ethics doesn't exactly correspond to the behavior of animals, or to some algorithmic model, but...

Maybe if language is to communication, then ethics is to some "deeper" biological program/algorithm that operates between organisms.

Such as this, perhaps... http://enemyindustry.net/blog/?p=4662

 

[Einherjar86]

A lot of my thoughts lately have been spiraling around (and trying to reconcile) consciousness and the laws of thermodynamics. Energy is neither created nor destroyed... perhaps not even in black holes...

It may be that emergent systems are happening on far vaster scales than even developed civilizations and technology...

Everything is dead already. Solar death is catastrophic because it vitiates ontological temporality as configured in terms of philosophical questioning's constitutive horizontal relationship to the future. But far from lying in wait for us in the far distant future, on the other side of the terrestrial horizon, the solar catastrophe needs to be grasped as something that has already happened; as the aboriginal trauma driving the history of terrestrial life as an elaborately circuitous detour from stellar death.

 

[Dak]

I haven't forgotten the bit on ethics, but I have nothing to contribute further at the moment.

Referring back to earlier discussion on the seeming disconnect between Land's acceleration and NRx, I posited that his personal moves, both physical and polisci, were survival oriented. I think that understanding has now been explicitly substantiated:

http://www.xenosystems.net/instant-publishing/

Neoreaction in a nutshells says — simultaneously — that progress is a horror story, and there is no going back. (This is a demanding tension, so there are even fewer neoreactionaries than one might think.) Upon accepting this formula, the response to instant publishing is pre-programmed. It is a nightmare become destiny, far more ruinous than has yet been envisaged, while unstoppable to a degree that no thought-processes are still slow enough to entertain. New media is a mind-shredder, into which we shall all certainly pass.

No reactionary denunciation of this trend can be too extreme, but the only format in which it makes practical sense is that of dynamic survivalism. What do we have to become to pass through the cyclone? That, my horrible splintered comrades, is the question.

 

[Einherjar86]

Land actually makes distinct use of the objectivism of horror; I'm not sure I agree with his assignment, but he conceives of horror as an absolute.

He says that progress is a horror story but one that is inevitable. So why classify himself as reactionary if his stance is: resistance is futile.

Furthermore, Land doesn't seem to really think that progress is a horror story because he seems to advocate the development of technology; unless he sees technological change as part of some thanatropic drive toward ultimate dissolution that we are helpless to withdraw from.

In which case, dynamic survivalism has nothing to do with the preservation and perpetuation of the human species. It has to do with the libidinal investment and coordination of organic matter, regardless of epistemological criteria. Humans aren't the things surviving into the future; his "future mutations" are.

Land is a strong anti-humanist in this sense.

EDIT: it just so happens that Craig over at noir realism already addressed this issue. This is from a post on Land's "Future Mutation" blog post and the accompanying publication:

http://darkecologies.com/2014/04/11/future-mutation/

Instead of perfection as in transhumanism we have the machinic imperative of the posthuman disconnect. “Bergson showed that a non-stop splicing of organisms, entities and their environments is all that there is. We do not evolve into ever more perfect versions of ourselves. Instead, component parts split off and find new avenues to explore, throwing up ever new traits and varieties to investigate and wander through: “we shall not witness the detailed accomplishment of a plan. Nature is more and better than a plan in course of realization. A plan is a term assigned to a labor: it closes the future whose form it indicates. Before the evolution of life, on the contrary, the portals of the future remain wide open. It is a creation that goes on for ever in virtue of an initial movement.”

This notion of the open incomplete future fully awakened to evolutionary potential, a realm of evolving entities whose mutations can never be closed off or faithfully copied or controlled is the core of this violent nativity. In this never ending realm of mutation even the original copy can become infested with the virus of overuse: “shanzhai companies have begun to sue the likes of Apple for the stealing of ideas. The take over of copies has begun”.

 

[Dak]

I don't know if I would characterize a strong survival instinct as strongly anti humanist. The tension that denies conservatives a NRx label is that conservation of tradition isn't possible. The future is always already here, and looks increasingly horrorific to an imagined past. NRx, to use my own phraseology, appears to seek to ride the wave rather than be crushed and washed away under and before it.

Separately, I think the attempt to contrast closed ends of labor with the openendedness of evolution occurs within or stems from an ignorance of emergent properties, or what we could possibly frame as a paradox of the market.

 

[Einherjar86]

You have to understand how Land is talking about survivalism.

He's embracing the term as inherently contradictory, or ambiguous. Survival is not one-sided and cannot be restricted to the survivalist ideology of intentional human agents. Survival is bound to the dissolution of life, so that to be survivalist means to be anti-life, and to be pro-life means to be anti-survival.

This all derives from complex and highly developed arguments, but Land is a participant in the conversation on survival as a paradoxical motivation that deconstructs the human.

 

[Dak]

Well I think it should be intuitive after the first glossing that survival necessitates change. Survival leaves little to nothing unchanged. This is that tension that Land points to, where NRx will ultimately shed any conservative adherents, or convert them entirely away. However, that doesn't mean survival is anti life, unless the definition of life is artificially closed, along with intentional possibilities.Land might not agree with that last bit, but that is how I see it.

 

[Einherjar86]

Conservative survival in fact seeks the very opposite of change. It aims at preservation by isolating itself from external forces.

 

[Dak]

Conservative survival in fact seeks the very opposite of change. It aims at preservation by isolating itself from external forces.

An ultimately impossible goal. Which is why Conservatism is forever fighting for what it was fighting against.

 

[Einherjar86]

An ultimately impossible goal. Which is why Conservatism is forever fighting for what it was fighting against.

Exactly my point; dynamic survivalism, if it purports to embody a new kind of preservative drive, logically must dissolve its borders and negate its positivity as designated by its own finitude.

The problematic of Life can be superficially — if not ironically — embraced by posing this question: Generally, we believe that life makes survival possible; but if life is the source of living then why do we need to survive? If life is the so-called vital source, then why is the act of living as an appropriation and a survivalist regulation necessary? Why is survival possible, or do we need to survive if life is already a source of living? Once we realize that the ethics of life is external to that of survival, and that survival is a resistance to the epidemic and overpowering presence of life, then we can say that to be pro-life is to be essentially anti-survival. Yet more grievously, when it comes to the exteriority of life to the living being, survival is intrinsically impossible.

 

[Dak]

I think that is framing survival too far into the abstract to be of any concrete use, which in turn negates the abstract. Ultimately, for the homoeconomicus or whatever, it is an evolutionary hardwiring of the biomass that directs it to take action that ensures genetic propagation. What that is and requires may evolve. Land, and moldbuggian positions as I understand them, interpret survival in this way. Technology is just seen as another flow of "genetic" propagation from a Landian accelerationist point of view, and a more rigid (or maybe fluid?) view of the singularity envisions a mixing of the two genetic flows.

Of course, to NRx, the Cathedral is a threat to Survival.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think that is framing survival too far into the abstract to be of any concrete use, which in turn negates the abstract.

This doesn't make sense. I appreciate you trying to employ the jargon, but something being impractical doesn't negate its structural logic in thought.

This concept of survival finds paradox in its very logic. Most practical behavior is illogical and/or irrational. The point here isn't behavior, but the logic of life and survival. "Survival," as it currently stands, is an enigmatic and ideological construct, however much we like to think of it as a physico-biological given.

Ultimately, for the homoeconomicus or whatever, it is an evolutionary hardwiring of the biomass that directs it to take action that ensures genetic propagation.

This is a grievous misunderstanding that I actually feel is the most important part of your post, and I think we should rectify it.

Evolution and "survival" don't ensure genetic propagation; evolution isn't directed in this sense. Organisms have no choice over their evolutionary adaptations, and genetics have no intentions in their mutations. Saying that genes mutate in order to ensure survival projects an intention and a design that is not really there.

Rather, evolutionary survival happens by sheer chance; those organisms whose adaptations allow them to weather the elements will survive, and pass on their genes to the next generation: survival of the luckiest.

We have, of course, never escaped the age of bacteria; and we never will. The human isn't some more effective form of life that bacteria strove toward in order to ensure their survival in the form of parasites of our intestinal systems. Bacteria would exist without us, some way or another; and bacteria are the supreme example of organisms whose existence depends monumentally on their constant integration into other living systems.

What that is and requires may evolve. Land, and moldbuggian positions as I understand them, interpret survival in this way. Technology is just seen as another flow of "genetic" propagation from a Landian accelerationist point of view, and a more rigid (or maybe fluid?) view of the singularity envisions a mixing of the two genetic flows.

Advantageous adaptations don't simply arrive to those who need them, or prove disadvantageous to those who fail to use them properly. There is no directive to evolutionary development. Evolution has no foresight. Survival cannot be the directed pulse of life toward advantageous mutation which it then employs rigorously against an outside world of external stimuli; this is simply an inaccurate view of the world.

At the root of all thriving organisms, survival doesn't exist. Survival is something we project onto the world.

Of course, to NRx, the Cathedral is a threat to Survival.

I don't think Land even has a clear idea of what the Cathedral is.

 

[Dak]

This doesn't make sense. I appreciate you trying to employ the jargon, but something being impractical doesn't negate its structural logic in thought.

I didn't think I was even using any jargon here . Sure it can be logical, but that doesn't provide any usefulness when we cannot find any parallels, and usefulness (I would say utility but that word is completely exhausted) should filter to some degree.

At the root of all thriving organisms, survival doesn't exist. Survival is something we project onto the world.

Of course I don't mean necessarily consciously (although humans do believe themselves to make conscious decisions regarding survival/propagation at times), and of course "nature" doesn't "attempt survival" just as whales don't see themselves as communicating. "Survival" vs survival. Time winnows out the disadvantaged, but if nothing is striving then there would be nothing to winnow, and what doesn't strive winnows itself out.

I don't think Land even has a clear idea of what the Cathedral is.

Are you saying there is a clear idea and Land isn't aware of/hasn't grasped it, or that the Cathedral is not a clear idea?

 

[Einherjar86]

I didn't think I was even using any jargon here . Sure it can be logical, but that doesn't provide any usefulness when we cannot find any parallels, and usefulness (I would say utility but that word is completely exhausted) should filter to some degree.

Usefulness relies on abstraction. It only makes sense to rationalize our actions as human if we have some concept of what the human is, and this is a consequence of thought.

If we dismiss all ideas because they don't seem immediately practical, then we limit ourselves to normative categories that don't actually hold in reality. The usefulness of humanism only reaches as far as our limbs and senses, and what we can immediately apprehend. The ideology of action and practice tells us that anything beyond that is useless. That simply isn't true; we just haven't discovered its usefulness yet. That discovery relies on a combination of thought and action.

Of course I don't mean necessarily consciously (although humans do believe themselves to make conscious decisions regarding survival/propagation at times), and of course "nature" doesn't "attempt survival" just as whales don't see themselves as communicating. "Survival" vs survival. Time winnows out the disadvantaged, but if nothing is striving then there would be nothing to winnow, and what doesn't strive winnows itself out.

The human belief in survival is an abstraction. There's no logical correlation between what we think of as survival and the persistence of life; there's only lucky coincidence. Survival happens in retrospect.

Are you saying there is a clear idea and Land isn't aware of/hasn't grasped it, or that the Cathedral is not a clear idea?

I'm saying both because I think it's a ridiculous proposal in the first place.

 

[Dak]

Usefulness relies on abstraction. It only makes sense to rationalize our actions as human if we have some concept of what the human is, and this is a consequence of thought.

If we dismiss all ideas because they don't seem immediately practical, then we limit ourselves to normative categories that don't actually hold in reality. The usefulness of humanism only reaches as far as our limbs and senses, and what we can immediately apprehend. The ideology of action and practice tells us that anything beyond that is useless. That simply isn't true; we just haven't discovered its usefulness yet. That discovery relies on a combination of thought and action.

I was just reading an article today talking about how poor we are at future predictions. However, it is possible to be a visionary and recognize potential, even if we cannot nail down all the details. But I think there is a difference between unicorns and unobtanium. I know that still isn't the best example.

The human belief in survival is an abstraction. There's no logical correlation between what we think of as survival and the persistence of life; there's only lucky coincidence. Survival happens in retrospect.

But don't we define it to correlate? Languages aren't always logical but language is. Or should I say rational.

I'm saying both because I think it's a ridiculous proposal in the first place.

Well that is a different claim altogether. The Cathedral isn't Land's idea, so it is possible he doesn't have a clear conception of it.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol4-dr-johnsons-hypothesis.html

Without acquiring a central coordinator, the Cathedral can capture the resources and powers of the State. It can devise theories of government which it can incorporate into the Synopsis, and which the State must follow. These theories naturally involve lavish support for the Cathedral, which becomes responsible for the production of "public policy," ie, government decisions. Ie, real power is held by the professors and journalists, ie the Cathedral, not through their purity and righteousness but through their self-sustaining control of public opinion. Lenin's great question, "Who? Whom?", is answered.

But why does the Cathedral not break into factions? What keeps Harvard aligned with Yale? Why doesn't one of the two realize that there is no need for a thousand synoptic progressive universities, and a vast unfilled demand for a single top-notch conservative university? Why, in short, is the Synopsis stable?

I think the answer is that the Synopsis includes only political propositions whose adoption tends to strengthen the Cathedral, and weaken its enemies. It rejects and opposes all other propositions. Inasmuch as these sets shift over time, the Synopsis will shift as well. It follows a sort of hill-climbing strategy - not in the landscape of truth, but that of power. Thus, by definition, it cannot be opposed from within.

To be progressive is simply to support the Cathedral and the Synopsis.