Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I'm not familiar with his later neoliberal stuff. I've read about it (in pieces like the one you link), but never actually read the source material, which I think is mostly lectures. I appreciate what the scholar interviewed here is doing, because it reveals the disparity and heterogeneity of postwar theorists. They all too often get lumped together as "postmodern Marxists," which Foucault clearly wasn't by the end of his life (and arguably even earlier, despite his relationship with the Althusserian school).

Personally, I view Foucault's neoliberal turn as a misguided attempt to theorize agency for the individual subject, which is lacking in his earlier work. Zamora rightly points out that Foucault saw the individual subject as "fairly passive, incapable of responding to power." He was interested in systems and structures of knowledge (knowledge here being something ideologically determined and organized, not a neutral concept), not in how subjects could withstand those structures. I suppose his fascination with neoliberalism derived from an urgency to theorize agency.

 

[Dak]

Personally, I view Foucault's neoliberal turn as a misguided attempt to theorize agency for the individual subject, which is lacking in his earlier work. Zamora rightly points out that Foucault saw the individual subject as "fairly passive, incapable of responding to power." He was interested in systems and structures of knowledge (knowledge here being something ideologically determined and organized, not a neutral concept), not in how subjects could withstand those structures. I suppose his fascination with neoliberalism derived from an urgency to theorize agency.

Misguided in which ways (not being familiar with source material either, and being mostly disdainful of Foucault on the motive level, I'm sure I would agree that it was misguided but maybe not in the same ways)?

In other news, Bakker drops a new piece:

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/exploding-the-manifest-and-scientific-images-of-man-2/

I'm not familiar with, or even all that interested in the piece that he is attempting to respond to (at least based on clips he responds to). I thought his Cognitive Ecologies section was reasonably accurate. Everything after that more or less went off the rails though. The hate on heuristics is simply a different type of blind bias to human cognitive diversity and the specific human-cognitive-limited-problemness, if you will, of problems for humans:

The contrast between shallow (source-insensitive) cognitive ecologies and deep information environments opens the question of the development of human self-understanding to the high-dimensional messiness of life.

The messiness of life increases as a response to the increasing access to deep information, which is provided by a decrease in reliance on heuristics in the accessors and the contact of the deep information problems for those without the neurobiological capability to handle it. In short, Bakker doesn't understand the problems of globalism + IQ, based on this blogpost. But that's typical of very smart people who don't understand IQ sufficiently, experientially. There's a truism, if not research (not sure), that a 40 IQ gap creates completely alien cognitive experience gap. I'll grant Bakker a higher IQ than myself. Given that, he couldn't fathom the cognitive ecology of 60-70+% of the planet. That's a pretty massive blindspot.

 

[Dak]

https://americanmind.org/essays/the-clear-pill-part-1-of-5-the-four-stroke-regime/

Moldbug is back without the pseudonym.

 

[Einherjar86]

Misguided in which ways (not being familiar with source material either, and being mostly disdainful of Foucault on the motive level, I'm sure I would agree that it was misguided but maybe not in the same ways)?

Just in the same way specified in that Jacobin piece--that he thought neoliberalism would be a way for individual citizens to discover and enact some kind of agency. As we now know from our privileged historical perspective, it hasn't done that.

Sounds like Moldbug and Bakker want analogous things--one says we should discard narratives, the other heuristics. At least, that's what a cursory glance tells me. I don't have time to dive into these.

 

[Dak]

Just in the same way specified in that Jacobin piece--that he thought neoliberalism would be a way for individual citizens to discover and enact some kind of agency. As we now know from our privileged historical perspective, it hasn't done that.

Well I think that the agency issue is something that people who don't understand biological contributions to cognition will continuously trip over.

Sounds like Moldbug and Bakker want analogous things--one says we should discard narratives, the other heuristics. At least, that's what a cursory glance tells me. I don't have time to dive into these.

Interesting conflation - heuristics and narratives. I don't think you're necessarily absolutely right here but definitely not absolutely wrong. I also don't have time given where I am in the dissertation and internship app process but I'm also procrastinating lol.

 

[Dak]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190930114732.htm

No-one knows what connects awareness -- the state of consciousness -- with its contents, i.e. thoughts and experiences. Now researchers propose an elegant solution: a literal, structural connection via 'L5p neurons'. The group offers evidence - and caveats. Their challenge to experimentalists: if consciousness requires L5p neurons, all brain activity without them must be unconscious.

I don't have any issue with this. There has to be some sort of "coordinating" or "attentional" process, if you will. *All* processes can't be "conscious". It's the coordination or attention that would be "consciousness".

 

[Einherjar86]

This is from last year, but it's the kind of criticism of contemporary identitarian progressivism that I'm happy to engage with, namely because it's so logically and lucidly presented. I also find it hard to argue against because of its rigor.

I've discussed before that Marxists academics and identitarian academics often clash over how to redress marginalization in modern society. It's easy to lump both groups together, but they're hardly bedfellows (although Benn Michaels certainly perceives how they could be).

https://nonsite.org/article/the-political-economy-of-anti-racism

Redistributing skin colors has nothing to do with redistributing wealth; a world where every race was proportionately represented at every income level would be exactly as unequal as the one we have now. Arguably, however, it would have both ethical and economic advantages, or at least, that’s what its advocates believe. The problem with discrimination is that it generates what economists call “bad” inequalities. If a white male gets promoted over a Latina despite the fact that the Latina was doing a better job, that’s a bad inequality and it’s bad in two ways. It’s ethically bad because it’s unfair (the white man is being chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with merit) and it’s economically bad because it’s inefficient (since the white man wasn’t chosen for merit, the job is probably not being done as well as it could be). What anti-discrimination looks to do, then, is solve both the ethical and the economic problem—to make sure that all groups have equal opportunity to succeed and thus also to help make sure that the jobs are being done by the people who are best at doing them. Which has absolutely nothing to do with eliminating economic inequality.5 In fact, it’s just the opposite: the point of eliminating horizontal inequality is to justify individual inequality.

This is why some of us have been arguing that identity politics is not an alternative to class politics but a form of it: it’s the politics of an upper class that has no problem with seeing people left behind as long as they haven’t been left behind because of their race or sex. And (this is at least one of the things that Marx meant by ideology) it’s promulgated not only by people who understand themselves as advocates of capital but by many who don’t. Even the Marxist anti-racist David Roediger thinks that “anti-capitalists” shouldn’t “sneer at” the goal of “evenly distribut[ing]” “poverty and inequality…across racial lines.” From his perspective, the problem is that “corporate embraces” of diversity “mask desires for the surplus value” it produces6 and “shift the terms of struggles against racism”—as if real anti-racism would get the job done. But if the job is a redistribution of wealth that will produce something other than horizontal equality, real anti-racism, just like real anti-discrimination of all kinds, not only won’t get it done but doesn’t even try to do it. Indeed, what it does instead is provide an account of failure—either you’re the victim of discrimination or you’re not a victim—so persuasive that even when it’s obviously not true, people believe it.

 

[Dak]

Indeed, what it does instead is provide an account of failure—either you’re the victim of discrimination or you’re not a victim—so persuasive that even when it’s obviously not true, people believe it.

This is what the rebellion is against.

 

[Dak]

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/beware-the-mediocre-robots.html

A super-robot replaces labor but has an immense productivity advantage which generates wealth and increases the demand for labor elsewhere. A mediocre-robot replaces the same labor but doesn’t have a huge productivity advantage. As a result, the mediocre robot is the true jobs killer because it replaces labor without greatly increasing wealth. Think about automated phone systems or chat bots.

Hadn't really considered this in these words.

 

[Dak]

https://americanmind.org/features/conservatism-in-the-bronze-age/the-deep-state-vs-the-deep-right/

Yarvin on cue.

The first step in getting to the 21st century is inventing it. The first step in inventing the 21st century is an aesthetic vision so strong, true and clear that it dominates and intimidates the stale old aesthetics of the 20th century.

Man invented art for one reason: to mog. The only reliable way to change a regime is to impress it into surrendering of its own free will. Persuasion is beta; only the uncertain persuade. The strong perform.

 

[Einherjar86]

On cue, or on point? He's one, but he's not the other.

But how can art become a weapon? Oh, art is extremely dangerous. Anything dangerous is a weapon.

 

[Dak]

On cue, or on point? He's one, but he's not the other.

One cue. I quoted the part I thought was the main point/takeaway. He didn't need to write the rest of it.

 

[Einherjar86]

It’s too bad he did. Some of it’s quite laughable.

I actually wouldn’t totally disagree with the part you quoted, although I imagine you and I have different reactions to the claim.

I do have a question though: what does “mog” mean?

 

[Dak]

It’s too bad he did. Some of it’s quite laughable.

I actually wouldn’t totally disagree with the part you quoted, although I imagine you and I have different reactions to the claim.

I do have a question though: what does “mog” mean?

I'm assuming he's using the urban dictionary definition rather than the other definitions out there, based on the context:

Verb; To assert ones dominance.

Adaptation of AMOG (Alpha Male of Group).

I don't per se even agree with the whole quote. I do agree with the part about persuasion being inferior to performance (in general). I think Yarvin is trying to ride along with BAP at the moment, but they serve very separate functions in the "deep right" , as he wants to call it, and I think Yarvin recognizes that his Moldbug moment can't hold a candle to what's happened post-Trump era. Smart guy, but there's never going to be a turtleneck revolution.

 

[Einherjar86]

I find it very difficult to qualify things like "persuasion" and "performance." I don't see how we can arrive at valid conclusions over their relative importance without falling back on value judgments about which parts of change are the most significant. This kind of qualification strikes me as similar to that which places "facts" above "framing/presentation." I have a hard time extricating these things from one another.

As far as Yarvin goes, he's not unintelligent, but I find so little worth taking away that it makes reading essays like this one a waste of time. And I find so much that's either blatantly wrong or poorly written that it makes me question the depth of his critical acumen.

 

[Dak]

I find it very difficult to qualify things like "persuasion" and "performance." I don't see how we can arrive at valid conclusions over their relative importance without falling back on value judgments about which parts of change are the most significant. This kind of qualification strikes me as similar to that which places "facts" above "framing/presentation." I have a hard time extricating these things from one another.

It's a little bit more clearly differentiated to me due to the difference in behavioral vs cognitive therapies (for a parallel example), although it's true that there's always a mix.

As far as Yarvin goes, he's not unintelligent, but I find so little worth taking away that it makes reading essays like this one a waste of time. And I find so much that's either blatantly wrong or poorly written that it makes me question the depth of his critical acumen.

His more recent writing seems to be a mix of assuming his audience knows his corpus and trying to graft it on to the current trends, which only works in certain cases, and the whole thing comes off poorly forced.

 

[Dak]

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/if-free-will-were-a-heuristic/

Bakker is showing his lack of followup on the relevant literature here:

So, let’s begin with a simple question: If free-will were a heuristic, a tool humans used to solve otherwise intractable problems, what would it’s breakdown look like?

But let’s take a step back for a second, and bite a very important, naturalistic bullet. Rather than consider ‘free-will’ as a heuristic, let’s consider something less overdetermined: ‘choice-talk.’ Choice-talk constitutes one of at least two ways for us humans to report selections between behaviours.

'Choice talk':

https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j4891 (From two years ago):

Many suggested refinements to the 2012 model and believed that improvements could be made to achieve a wider understanding of shared decision making. The terms “choice talk” and “option talk” were considered too similar. Others found it odd that the model did not mention risk communication or goal setting,232425 particularly as the idea of coproduction26 gains ground, and reported too little emphasis on exploring patient preferences and context. These critiques also reflected developments in the shared decision making literature. One study argued that illness brings a state of “uncertainty, vulnerability, and loss of power.”27 The researchers advocated shared decision making to enhance or restore a patient’s “autonomous capacity,” to pay more attention to the emotional and relational dimensions of care, and to emphasize the need to support the patient during a process of decision making, given that for most it may well be a novel experience. The 2012 model did not tackle these issues.

In the whole writeup, there's something of a sidestep of the interplay between biological predisposition, contingent environment input along the developmental path, and contingent immediate environmental and biological processing at the point of choice. "Free will" might not have the same meaning it had in the Cartesian sense, but it remains as individual as can be. Which is not as "disastrous" as Bakker wants it to be. The funny thing is that Bakker is correct about biocomplexity messing things up, just not in the way he would likely be happy to recognize.

 

[Dak]

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2017.0792#d3e817

Very cool read.

Thus, any Markov blanketed system will embody recurrent processes of autopoietic self-generation, which—as long as the system exists—enforces a difference between a living system and everything else [33]. This means that these processes are fundamentally processes of identity constitution, given that they result in a functionally coherent unit [36]. Casting operational closure in terms of the presence of a Markov blanket gives the notion of operational closure a statistical formulation. One of the nice things about casting operational closure in terms of the presence of a Markov blanket is that it allows us to explain what Varela [36] called ‘the intriguing paradox’ of an autonomous identity: how a living system must both distinguish itself from its environment and, at the same time, maintain its energetic coupling to its environment to remain alive. According to Varela: ‘this linkage cannot be detached since it is against this very environment from which the organism arises, comes forth’ [36, p. 78].

The answer to this apparent paradox lies in the conditional independencies induced by the presence of a Markov blanket, which (as we know) separates internal states and external states, and can be further decomposed into active states and internal states. Crucially, active and sensory states are distinguished in the following sense: active states influence but cannot be influenced by external states, while sensory states influence but cannot be influenced by internal states. This constraint enforces conditional independence between internal and external states—from which an autonomous identity can be shown to emerge—while creating a coupling between organism and environment via sensory and active states.

 

[Einherjar86]

Really cool. Up my alley, but haven’t had time to read it all. Never heard of Markov blankets before.

 

[Einherjar86]

Moving this here:

I agree! Minus Carson, maaaaaaybe (I don't think he's a bad guy, but he's been misappointed out of his area of expertise). Fuck both Kushner (and Ivanka for that matter) and Bolton 3x over, but only Kushner is still in place (unfortunately). Most of Trump's notable appointments have been bad but shortlived. He even supposedly mocked Bolton the whole time he was in position which is almost worth the appointment. You have to consider the fact that many potential good appointees wouldn't consider accepting a position for fear of that Deep State/Cathedral reprisal that supposedly doesn't exist.

Short-lived yes, but they shouldn't have happened in the first place. It goes to show how inept he is--in my opinion, anyway.

I do see them bad because of EROEI. Renewable subsidies (specifically, wind/solar) are more or less a net loss every time I look at the data excepting maybe solar panels directly on houses. I'm against subsidies in a true ceteris paribus environment, but ceteris paribus in fact doesn't apply to international economics. The US has to contend with Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. Hydro is less of an issue because of EROEI but creates other environmental issues (which solar/wind farms do as well).

Sorry, you gotta tell me what EROEI stands for...

As far as solar goes, you just said what it needs to be: solar on houses, on buildings! Universities are some of the most hypocritical institutions in this regard; they put panels on one or two buildings, all the while investing in pipelines out west.

I know people in Massachusetts who've installed panels on their houses; it's not an immediate return, but after a year they've said it more than pays off. Imagine if all buildings in an urban area installed them...

Obviously oil is the centerpiece of modern energy, but it's not going to last; in fact, at current rates of consumption, we might be out of oil by the end of the twenty-first century. There's only so much dead matter beneath our feet. The shift needs to be incentivized now--to solar, hydro, wind, nuclear, a combo.

Multinational capitalism is a problem in a variety of ways but the opposition is always misdiagnosing how/why and subsequently the cure is worse than the disease. Tucker Carlson isn't right about everything, but he's the closest to the mark these days when it comes to talking heads. My preferred policies: Indefinitely freeze immigration (including seasonal). Repatriate manufacturing through carrot/stick approach of tariffs and subsidies. End "green" subsidies. Subsidize 4thGen nuclear. Eradicate the entire welfare state payout/bureaucracy and replace it with a UBI pegged to some index which yields something like the Trumpbux that just went out. I have other ideas about the healthcare industry but I'm less settled on those issues than these issues listed here.

I wouldn't immediately object to any of this, with the exception of "freeze immigration."

I would say, good luck pushing nuclear subsidies. And I'd add removing oil subsidies. Again, it's a cornerstone; but we need to start thinking long-term, and nuclear/solar/hydro/wind are all regenerative. Oil is finite, and the end is near.