Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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".
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

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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?
 
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.
 
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.