Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

I wonder if there's a Trump-phrase-usage-exchange. I'll buy "very important" and sell "nasty woman".

 

[Dak]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

Apparently I'm only batshit because I'm poor.

 

[Einherjar86]

So you think the article doesn't portray survivalist tendencies of the super-rich as "batshit"?

 

[Dak]

So you think the article doesn't portray survivalist tendencies of the super-rich as "batshit"?

It boils down to basic cost-risk assessment.

Yishan Wong, an early Facebook employee, was the C.E.O. of Reddit from 2012 to 2014. He, too, had eye surgery for survival purposes, eliminating his dependence, as he put it, “on a nonsustainable external aid for perfect vision.” In an e-mail, Wong told me, “Most people just assume improbable events don’t happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically.” He continued, “The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”

 

[Einherjar86]

I wasn't asking whether you think the super-rich actually are batshit.

Your comment insinuated that, because you share similar survivalist/apocalyptic thoughts as the super-rich, there must be another reason why you're "batshit" - i.e. they're wealthy, so survivalism is okay; but you're poor, so your survivalism is crazy.

That's what I got from your comment. But I don't think the article portrays the super-rich as what I would call sane, or normal.

 

[Dak]

What's batshit about risk management in the form of diversification of investment into non-financial product forms (unless it totally consumes you obviously)?

 

[Einherjar86]

Haha, I don't think we're connecting here.

I'm not trying to say that survivalism is batshit or that it isn't. I'm asking purely about the perspective of the article you posted.

You want to talk about the thing itself. I was talking about the text.

 

[Dak]

Well that's why I offered the qualifier at the end of my previous post. If you are consumed by anything - in this case survivalism - it's no longer diversification/risk management.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

This literally inspired me to buy a camping backpack, water filter and rations tonight haha. Haven't thought about emergency prepping for a while, and it's time I stopped putting off the "bug out bag" project.

Never thought of lasik as a survivalist thing - good idea there. I theoretically have budget space for an uninsured beater motorcycle, but a moped or bicycle is way more convenient. Getting into training or construction projects is more time and effort than I care for.

 

[Einherjar86]

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/reactionary-atheism-hagglund-derrida-and-nooconservatism/

Everyone agrees that something radical is happening. Also, everyone agrees that this ‘something’ turns on the every-expanding powers of science–and the sciences of the brain in particular. This has led to what promises to become one of those generational changes in philosophical thinking, at least in its academic incarnation. Though winded, thought is at last attempting to pace the times we live in. But I fear that it’s failing this attempt, that, far from exposing itself to the most uncertain future humanity has ever known, materially let alone intellectually, it is rather groping for ways to retool and recuperate a philosophical heritage that the sciences are transforming into mythology as we speak. It is attempting to innoculate thought as it exists against the sweeping transformations engulfing its social conditions. To truly expose thought, I want to argue, is to be willing to let it die…

Or become inhuman.

 

[Dak]

Is Bakker committing seppuku? It's a dramatic statement and I think there's a kernal of truth there, but he appears to be crossing into the "profound statement" territory. I put scare quotes around that because it's my poking fun of the vapid "intellectualism" found in art departments. All talk, no substance.

There are two developments that all this transhumanism or posthumanism stuff hinges on and those developments are relative post-scarcity and the self-transformation of AI. Neither of which have any sort of significant guarantee. I understand the edgy coolness underlying the desire to jump behind the possibilities which those developments open up, but they are not even remotely foregone conclusions.

 

[Einherjar86]

I prefer posthumanism to transhumanism. The latter is a soft SF fantasy, the former is an epistemological reorientation.

Your observations are significantly economic in nature, but we have to consider these new findings in terms beyond economics. I think Bakker is saying that contemporary developments in cognitive science and neuroscience demand an attempt to formulate our theories in an inhuman way. You'll probably object that we can't help but formulate theories in a human way, but I would disagree. A theory of nonsense already rebuffs our human predispositions; maybe the trick is letting certain neuroscientific findings guide us through our nonsensical arguments.

 

[Dak]

As someone operating and learning on the outskirts of neuroscience, I would counter that neuroscience has so far promised much more than it has been able to deliver. Obviously that doesn't mean this course can't reverse in the future, but I think that at this point there's empirical support for serious skepticism. I also think that to couch economics in merely human terms is to overlook the mechanistic/physical realities surrounding resource discovery, extraction, manipulation, and recovery.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think that it failed to deliver because, possibly, we've been unable to extricate our humanist assumptions from what we've discovered. Hence they seem of little value.

When we talk about our expectations for delivery, so to speak, we're working based on assumptions handed down from our culture. If a field provides findings that do not complement those assumptions, then it stands to reason that we wouldn't see much value in them.

Unfortunately I'm not fluent in the economic terminology, but you're right that it's presumptuous to reduce economics to its humanist applications. Post-scarcity strikes me as a humanist element of economics though, as it appeals to the capacity of a society to provide for all its subjects. I don't think Bakker's posthumanism would rely on post-scarcity. He's making an epistemological argument, it seems to me.

 

[Dak]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745

Asked in a phone interview this week whether he’s had meetings with Bannon or his associates, Taleb said he could not comment. “Anything about private meetings would need to come from them,” he said, though he noted cryptically he’s had “coffee with friends.”

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon.

If this speculation is true this is kinda yuge.

 

[Einherjar86]

Will Trumpism work, Anton asks? He’s not sure—but he argues that it’s worth trying, given the alternative: “[T]he ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”

Shoot me now.

 

[Dak]

Well I could be wrong but I do believe the data suggest that minorities and immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat. If this is true, it seems not a leap to see immigration as a politically fraught area. The cynical flipside to this idea is that Democrats are pro immigration because they increase their political power. There are critiques of this perspective as well as the effectiveness of bans etc but it'seems not to be prima facie crazy or "wrong".

 

[Einherjar86]

My exhaustion doesn't have to do with the issue of immigration per se (although I am exhausted with it, honestly). It has to do with that idiot's claims that "foreigners" have "no taste for liberty" and that they'll make our country "less traditionally American."

a) fuck the idea that "foreigners" somehow have no appreciation for being free. Plenty of other countries have freedom, and plenty of refugees understand that they just might enjoy it if they could just get it (I think the idea of people "having" freedom is stupid to begin with, but whatever, I'm stooping to this Anton's level).

b) there is no traditional America. The old landowners hated it when the industrialists took over, and the industrialists hated it when the technocrats took over. If "traditional America" is going back to corn and cotton, well... you know how I feel about that.

 

[Einherjar86]

If this speculation is true this is kinda yuge.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...bug-steve-bannon-neoreactionary-curtis-yarvin

So it was quite interesting when Politico’s Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols reported on Tuesday that Moldbug was in contact with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon:

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source.


This struck me as odd; Moldbug is not really hard to reach. So I reached out and asked him if he was indeed in contact with Bannon. He strenuously denied it:

The idea that I'm "communicating" with Steve Bannon through an "intermediary" is preposterous. I have never met Steve Bannon or communicated with him, directly or indirectly. You might as well accuse the Obama administration of being run by a schizophrenic homeless person in Dupont Circle, because he tapes his mimeographed screeds to light poles where Valerie Jarrett can read them.

 

[Dak]

a) fuck the idea that "foreigners" somehow have no appreciation for being free. Plenty of other countries have freedom, and plenty of refugees understand that they just might enjoy it if they could just get it (I think the idea of people "having" freedom is stupid to begin with, but whatever, I'm stooping to this Anton's level).

By coming here, they indicate a desire to have more opportunity (as a proxy for "liberty"). By voting patterns, they indicate they don't understand why here is better than there. Opportunity to vote for low level gimmedats is how this plays out politically. Obviously, the GOP has it's own issue gimmedats for certain groups.

b) there is no traditional America. The old landowners hated it when the industrialists took over, and the industrialists hated it when the technocrats took over. If "traditional America" is going back to corn and cotton, well... you know how I feel about that.

I think it's agreeable that any one of these eras of change you mention still look distinctly different than Latin America, the Middle East, or Asia.