On a Second-Order Pragmatism

RWY

Well-known member
You might be better off taking your proposal over to a relevant subreddit (i.e. r/singularity or r/Futurology).
 

RWY

Well-known member
What you have in mind sounds a bit like Aleksei Gastev's 'Social Engineering Machine'.

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
an algorithmically optimized and unified worldview/ideology/toolbox that would come to supplant one's life
it's beyond just despotic - that is intensely dystopian, and everything I am against

and not against in the it's not actually serious way of arguing about music on a message board, but dead serious, every fiber of my being against

it's not very serious here - because it is just a message board - but it's the true nightmare vision of the general irl near and further future
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Any idea what kind of worldviews and ideologies you have in mind?
From what I can tell so far, it seems like these "new" positions/ideologies (I am equating those two here, as in a position on some map/plane of ideology) would differ primarily in they better integrate their opposition into their theses. That is, instead of taking a position and just asserting that other positions are ignorant/uninformed, this new kind of position would acknowledge its dependency on the others, and vice versa. It could actually be a step away from despotism, in that sense.

It is still very abstruse, especially in terms of what these new positions would consist of, really.

Some factors that may influence these positions:

Something of a cosmology which, hopefully, could function as a kind of secular religion. Wherein the vital essence/spark of the human is preserved in its protagonistic/pseudo-transcendent capacity, but is merely expressed as, say, the incarnation of negative entropy, instead of a divine spark. Well, the two aren't necessarily incompatible, as far as I can tell.

Hypothetically, a new understanding of disciplinarity, on how we organize/segregate/compartmentalize logos, could very well play into the formation of new ideologies. Really, that is the part of the project that my crosshairs fall most precisely onto. It seems that worlds of novelty could flood from a different approach to organizing logos, with ramifications in, really, every other aspect of our lives.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
large segments of our lives are already determined by algorithmic rule and that's almost certainly only going to increase

there is no way I would voluntarily sign up for more

note all the talk about pragmatism, efficiency, social engineering - since when is the point of dissensus achieving greater efficiency? or harmony?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the regular looming dystopian future of rule by a tiny tech-bro elite over a large mass of proles on UBI is bad enough

this is like, orders of magnitude worse
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
it's beyond just despotic - that is intensely dystopian, and everything I am against

and not against in the it's not actually serious way of arguing about music on a message board, but dead serious, every fiber of my being against

it's not very serious here - because it is just a message board - but it's the true nightmare vision of the general irl near and further future
I don't want to dance around this, but this is precisely why I try to give the disclaimers that I give ("Not sure if I would firmly defend this or that articulation" etc)

There is something profoundly regimented and machinic about this - but it is attempting to merely be a conceptual mirror of the way that we, as organisms, as vastly ramified assemblages of intelligent matter, are already profoundly regimented/organized.

Much of the difficulty I have in grappling with all of this is the tendency for diametrically opposed dynamics to seemingly operate in harmony. I can detect an algorithmic and machinic ontology, but I can also detect a floating, improvisational, situational ontology as well. It seems to involve a weaving between ontologies, and the algorithm would pertain to this weaving. That is, the weaving-between-ontologies would be a function of sorts, algorithmic, whereas the ontologies would function as modes/moods that would be prompted in response to particular circumstances. There would be freer, more romantic, more sensitive modes, and there would be more zen, cognitive/computational modes (although I am hesitant to use the term "computational")

Much of it revolves around calibrating conscious agency with preconsicous agency, aligning ones ideals and strategies and epistemologies with how intelligent matter seems to operate.

And I cannot stress enough, much of this can take seemingly abrupt and sharp turns, in terms of the reasoning/explanation of it.

Overall, I think I can understand, and even argue for, an opposition to something that would be this algorithmic. The thing is, as far as I can tell, it isn't the being that is algorithmic, but the weaving between beings that would be algorithmic. It is just a higher order ontology, one that can, perhaps, keep intact the ontologies that we value and introduce new ones.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also @constantescape due respect for the effort but I offer you the constructive criticism to pare your writing way, way down

or, do what you want of course but

I guarantee you that your ideas - whether I agree with them or not - would come across significantly better without the endless blocks of text
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
the regular looming dystopian future of rule by a tiny tech-bro elite over a large mass of proles on UBI is bad enough

this is like, orders of magnitude worse
Again, not sure how much I would get behind this argument Im about to make, but: doesn't this tech-bro wave, even if it has already become a tsunami, only promise to become exponentially more pronounced? Part of what I;m arguing is that we need to, in a sense, appropriate the algorithm in the interest of paving a new multiplicity of roads, rather than waiting for the techno-capitalist algorithm to consolidate any remaining plurality into a single road. What I'm talking about is building a new arena around the algorithm, so as to enable contest, rather than just wait for it to crystalize its despotism - which is precisely where it is heading.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
also @constantescape due respect for the effort but I offer you the constructive criticism to pare your writing way, way down

or, do what you want of course but

I guarantee you that your ideas - whether I agree with them or not - would come across significantly better without the endless blocks of text
I think so too, and that is, hopefully, where I am heading. Quite simply, I am just experiencing difficulty in expressing much of it in ways that are not dense or obfuscating. And that's because I'm experiencing difficulty in understanding it myself. Hopefully a better way of articulation will come with a better understanding, and that will just take work. Luckily, I have to the time to do it.

In short, I think the criticism you offer, here, is one of the crucial things that needs to be kept in mind. I totally agree.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
What you have in mind sounds a bit like Aleksei Gastev's 'Social Engineering Machine'.

About to look more into this guy, seeing as I haven't come across the name before. Could you explain some of it?

Also, regarding reddit, I could look into it - it's just not familiar territory and would involve building something of a platform, I suppose, before peddling any theory. Would you consider such a place to be receptive to such theories?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
well, a response to dystopia is better than dystopia. good luck with it.

I am and would be dead-set against ever voluntarily sublimating my individuality to algorithmic rule for any reasons

(leaving aside philosophical and neuroscience arguments about individuality, consciousness, free will, etc)

and yeah you'd find a much better response on subreddits or any forum (or FB group, IRC, etc) devoted to things like the singularity, transhumanism, etc

this is a loose of affiliation of individuals with all kinds of different views (one of its strengths), a lot of them hostile to what you're talking about. you're looking for something more like a group project, or at least a group devoted to a particular topic.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
So it sounds like you want to resynthesize what already exists, but with tethers to gently guide the subjects towards the ideals agreed upon by some kind of board? (Made up of who, decided or voted in by who?)

Even though super computers may offer much more sophistication than anything before, any effort in that direction, ever, either ended up falling apart or much much worse. There's never going to be a one size fits all made by code. And even if there were, going back to my point in the resistance thread, I'd rather have the flawed human code than anything thought up by some nerds in a lab.

If however, it were possible to dip in, just to check out whole new realities, like go on a holiday to a Gaudi designed star system or back in time, virtually, I'd be up for that. But, DFW once warned that we need to be wary of the time when virtual reality becomes preferable to our own. And I think we're already getting there.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
There probably would be more to gain in regards to theoretical feedback from those other places, but I think I value the spirit of this place more, especially of those who would oppose aspects of any such project.

The fact is, I don't yet have nearly enough of an understanding of things in order to express them smoothly and effectively, but enough of the threads here revolve around crucially relevant points, and the dialogues that emerge provide great opportunities to elaborate upon and understand some of this stuff.

And it seems like what I am trying to convince people of is not to take up a certain position, but to continue their current position in different arena/context/language/etc. That seems to involve catering/appealing to a variety of conflicting ideologies and values, and being able to do so without lying, being pretentious or being vacuously rhetorical.

It all is as it should be, in that sense. Perhaps I'm just not articulating it as being so.

What about this phrasing: if we genetically operate in a manner equivalent to algorithms, could there be revolutionary potential in calibrating certain non-algorithmic aspects of our being towards the algorithm?

Although maybe this talk of algorithms is a bit excessive - maybe the metaphor of the theory-machine can be taken too far, and maybe it introduces elements of rigidity that don't need to be there.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
So it sounds like you want to resynthesize what already exists, but with tethers to gently guide the subjects towards the ideals agreed upon by some kind of board? (Made up of who, decided or voted in by who?)

Even though super computers may offer much more sophistication than anything before, any effort in that direction, ever, either ended up falling apart or much much worse. There's never going to be a one size fits all made by code. And even if there were, going back to my point in the resistance thread, I'd rather have the flawed human code than anything thought up by some nerds in a lab.

If however, it were possible to dip in, just to check out whole new realities, like go on a holiday to a Gaudi designed star system or back in time, virtually, I'd be up for that. But, DFW once warned that we need to be wary of the time when virtual reality becomes preferable to our own. And I think we're already getting there.

At this stage, I would largely agree with your point about checking out other realities, gauging them for their potential to restructure certain aspects of our understanding of the world - and by extension restructuring our world.

That DFW point is the thing, largely, that I am trying adamantly to veer away from. And I think we will veer away from it, regardless of whether or not such a veering will be similar to the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

It seems like any virtual reality, or alternative existence, that can and will be commodified, will only happen if certain components of our value systems remain unchanged. What components? I'm still not sure. But I think it has to do with our cosmology, as the secular side of the coin opposite religion (?). It might have to do with how we organize knowledge. It might have to do with a whole other plethora of philosophic stuff.

It might have to do with how alone we feel, and how such feelings are becoming so commonplace that they aren't even recognized as avoidable/mendable.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Part of the difficulty here, perhaps, might boil down to this: how can you prepare/equip yourself to charge toward that which is worth cowering from? My current answer: by rigorously understanding what it is and how it came to be. That might illuminate pathways of perseverance that would otherwise remain concealed.

And hey, maybe a ton of this won't turn out to be necessary, relevant, or applicable in the long term. At least, perhaps, it may grant a few new insights into things.

And it is easy for me to get carried away by it all, seeing as I've been increasingly dedicated to it.
 
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