Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Sokal Love Affair

It's really extraordinary, but I have to say that I haven't heard the word "postmodern" in the halls of academe for over a decade and yet I still encounter the word "postmodern" constantly in the castigatory characterization of academe among those conservatives who also still grouse about "political correctness" as well as those most unpleasant of the so-called champions of science for whom that championing seems to demand the derision of things that people talk about in humanities departments.

Anyway, this is yet another post adapted from an exchange in the thread over at Accelerating Future. It meanders a bit but covers quite a lot of interesting ground, I think.

My interlocutor for this round is one "GK" who says:
Dale’s argument can be stated clearly, which being a postmodernist, he cannot do. Dales argument is:

1. The technologies that transhumanists believe are possible (MNT, AI, self replicating manufacturing, etc) are not possible.

2. Talk about these technologies serves monied corporate interests and such talk is dangerous, because it obstructs democratic objectives. For example, talk about future geoengineering de-emphasizes the priority of actually solving environmental problems in the present.

I disagree with point 1 and agree weakly with some of point 2. But point 2 is relevant only if point 1 is correct. Dale absolutely refuses to address the argument that known physics implies that MNT and AI are possible….
To this, I reply:

"The technologies that transhumanists believe are possible (MNT, AI, self replicating manufacturing, etc) are not possible.

"Logically possible is not the same as possible within sociopolitical constraints. Nor is it the same as proximate enough to characterize in a relevant way or devote more attention to than to more urgent concerns (including many actual technodevelopmental ones).

"I happen to think that transhumanists are actually far less interested in 'predicting the possible' than in indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasies rendered apparently plausible and therefore more satisfying as escapism by wrapping them up in pseudo-scientific pseudo-policy pseudo-philosophical language. Because I am a defender of consensus science, good policy, and real philosophy I disapprove what I regard as their abuse by futurologists.

"Also, I really don’t think it is right to describe me as a 'postmodernist.'

"Where most of the quarrels of the ancients and moderns are concerned, whether aesthetic, political, or moral, I tend to side with the moderns if I have to pick a side. It shouldn’t be surprising to note that as someone trained and teaching in STS (science and technology studies) I find Bruno Latour’s case in We Have Never Been Modern congenial, which rather upsets the whole so-called postmodern applecart.

"Strictly speaking, I think the term 'postmodern' tends to be deployed like 'political correctness' to create a smokescreen by means of which to dismiss complex arguments taking place among activists and academics without actually taking the time to understand them. While I adore some writers who get regularly accused of being 'postmodern' -- Foucault, Butler, Rorty, say -- I dislike others enormously -- Derrida, Heidegger, Zizek, say -- and I must say that these writers are usually more interesting in their strong differences with one another than in any agreements in any case, so I think the whole “postmodern” term has long outlived its usefulness, whatever that may ever have been. I mean, you know, just as a side note."

Whereupon, later on, "GK" responds, and in tones that I imagine would approximate those of a comic opera cuckold pulling back a curtain to reveal three nudes with erections beside his wife's featherbed, or a triumphal "J'accuse!":
Look what Dale has on the blog roll of his website: SOCIAL TEXT[!] Social Text is the postmodernist “science studies” “journal” that got spoofed fifteen years ago by physicist Alan Sokal. Sokal submitted an article about quantum gravity that was complete gibberish from beginning to end; but had proper grammatic structure and was peppered with postmodern jargon. The Social Text editors accepted a submission that was complete gibberish…. The Social Text editors were skilled in “Rhetoric” and philosophy and “politics” and could tell that Sokal’s paper about Quantum Gravity was valid without having to bother with equations or scientific arguments. Likewise, Dale’s skill in Rhetoric” and philosophy and “politics” lets him tell that nanotechnology and AI are not valid without having to bother with equations or scientific arguments. As Dale explains, he is not a postmodernist. But he and Social Text must be part of the same “archipelago” since it somehow found its way to his blogroll. I need to get back to work drafting a patent application for my physicist client who has invented an improved chip manufacturing technology. Too bad. That kind or work is difficult. Engaging in online “rhetoric” is fun and easy (its just a variation of ad homenin [sic] attacks combined with ridicule). Perhaps I should teach a class in rhetoric or science studies…
To this rather startling outburst, I react with:

"Really, the Sokal Affair?

"Still?

"Yes, one issue of one periodical associated with one link on my blogroll was the central player in that rather sorry episode.

"I happen not to be one who agrees with those most stalwart defenders of Social Text who declare their editors need not have had the standards to understand the text they published under their auspices well enough to grasp they were being spoofed. But neither, frankly, do I agree with some of the more triumphalist interpretations of the significance of the Sokal Affair by those who would dismiss altogether sociological or discursive studies for understanding the role and forms of technoscience in our history and in our current struggles.

"Be all that as it may, shocking though the notion may be to you, Social Text has managed to publish quite a lot of worthy material in my view even though not everything it has published is equally worthy. Hence, I read it to my benefit and link to it so that others might also do so who otherwise might not.

"Technodevelopment has indispensable and ineradicable rhetorical and political dimensions whether you want to recognize them or not. Sorry if it hurts your head to hear such a response, and do by all means dismiss it as nihilism or fashionable nonsense if that’s what gets you through the night.

"Your suggestion that you could teach my subject without my training is quite familiar and quite ugly anti-intellectualism. You should know better, and I will assume this is an unfortunate lapse in judgment on your part. If you think this exchange has been 'fun and games' for me, I daresay you don’t know me very well."

"GK," a bit chastened but sticking to his guns, then responds:
Dale: for what it is worth. I don’t think that I could teach your subjection [sic?], or any graduate humanities subject for that matter. I am a fellow liberal and big follower of your blog and will work very hard next year for “More and better Democrats”, which to your credit, sums up what really matters very well.

My post was sarcastic and rude, but about A ONE HUNDREDTH as rude as your posts are. Calling people with different views “robot cultists” and the like, instead of addressing the real technical issues. If a physicist could show me that molecular nanotechnology is impossible, I would no longer support it. Why would I knowingly support something that is impossible? If you have such arguments, I would really like to hear them. Calling people Robot Cultists serves no purpose.

I can play the ridicule the other side “rhetoric” game as well as you. I just chose not to, and prefer substantive debate.
To which, I then conclude (at any rate, for now) with the following:

"If a physicist could show me that molecular nanotechnology is impossible, I would no longer support it. Why would I knowingly support something that is impossible?

"If by 'molecular nanotechnology' you mean what superlative futurologists usually mean -- full-on Drextech: general programmable assemblers creating superabundance on the cheap -- then it should matter that the overabundant majority of physicists and molecular biologists and materials scientists working at the relevant scale and with the relevant phenomena are not talking about Drextech while Drextech is all you fellows really care about at all.

"Even if what these researchers are working on is enormously interesting and some it might well yield important proximate breakthroughs, it matters that these breakthrough are NOT general assemblers, NOT respirocytes, NOT utility fog. It matters that these breakthroughs -- and their real problems, whether these real problems are problems of physics or of funding or of regulation or of dissemination -- are to be breakthroughs and problems on their own terms, not only when seen through a distortive lens refiguring them instead as steps along a path to the transcendent quasi-theological Superabundance of general assemblers and utility fog, the transcendent quasi-theological Superlongevity of therapeutic nanobots, nor the transcendent quasi-theological Superintelligence of nanocomputers, or borganizing interfaces or what have you.

"Meanwhile, the majority of those few working scientists who do pay any attention to superlative extrapolations either pat your heads and declare your concerns distantly speculative or actually do debunk you (whereupon many are expelled from consideration in your salons), all the while still the same coterie of True Believers at the margins continues to publish papers for one another, hoping the circle-jerk will eventually acquire sufficient heft to look like a respectable literature (in my view, rather in the manner of anthropogenic climate-change denialist literature).

"I must say it strikes me as odd to hear you propose that the work of physicists should be to disabuse you of your pet wish-fulfillment fantasies rather than working on actually-shared problems and building on actually-warranted scientific knowledge.

"As I mentioned before, while I do think some of the fancies described by futurologists as 'tech' -- despite the fact that none of it exists -- are rightly decried as impossible ("uploading" "selves" into "cyberspace" for one), I think it is quite enough to point out that others are so utterly under-characterized and non-proximate and marginal that one cannot help but wonder why so very many of these fancies, literally one after another after another, preoccupy the attention of a group so assured of its superior scientific bona fides.

"Indeed, so committed to their assertive self-image as paladins of science are they that you can see them crowing even among these exchanges here and now about how their repeated leap to the margins somehow demonstrates their hard boiled realism as opposed to a presumably muzzy-headed fashionably-nonsensical humanities nihilist-relativist (me) who simply knows enough to know when he doesn’t know and so defers to the verdict of warranted consensus.

"You ask, why would one 'support' (a better word in my view would be 'fixate on') speculative implementations of undercharacterized techniques at the margins of warranted science? Well, here goes…

"I have no doubt at all that some of you fellows do it because you are scared of death and you think artifactual magicks will get you off the hook.

"I have no doubt that some of you are terrified by the contingency of life more generally, your vulnerability to error, confusion, humiliation and find in your fetishization of magick tech a false but consoling promise of its transcendence.

"I have no doubt that some of you are working through personal insecurities and are still smarting from humiliations and slights that provoke investment in sooper-humanizing magicks that provide compensation or revenge (rather than just growing up and learning to forgive).

"I have no doubt that some of you are insecure and happened to find your way into the gravity well of a futurological guru rather than a New Age guru or some anarcho-primitivist skateboard collective or some spoken word koffee klatch or some spandexed fanny-packed long-distance running cohort.

"I have no doubt that some of you are anti-government ideologues who think the tech magick will circumvent via the arrival of superabundance the stakeholder impasse that demands ongoing reconciliation you may dislike and justifies the social democratic State some of you clearly do abhor.

"So, there are plenty of reasons even quite bright people capable of doing some real good in the world were they otherwise occupied might be drawn instead into a discourse or subculture in which pseudo-science, pseudo-policy, and pseudo-philosophy makes transcendental promises feel real through fervent collective repetition, especially when these promises are merely amplifying the already comfortably familiar deceptive hyperbolic techno-fetishistic norms and forms of our narcissistic hyper-individualist consumer capitalist society.

"Finally, I actually do think you are right to castigate me for using the derisive term 'Robot Cultists' when I am a guest of someone I think of as one. Michael and I have been trading jocular punches in this mode for years, but not all of the participants in this thread know all that, and so it matters that it is rude. I use the term 'superlative futurology/ist' roughly synonymously with 'Robot Cult/ist' but I think it lacks the insulting connotation while remaining clear. I have been a rude guest in not sticking to the very term 'superlativity' which is the subject of my host’s post. My apologies. I’ll try to do better.

"I’m glad you still get some benefit from my more political writings. For me, there happens to be a strong continuity between my libertopian critiques and my futurological critiques."

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