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

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Futurological Factishness

From an exchange upgraded and adapted from the Moot to this post, Mitchell said:
"nobody has ever been willing (or able) to engage Dale in a serious intellectual exchange" I'm not sure where the intellectual locus of such an exchange would be. For scientific criticisms of transhumanist projects, Dale defers to people like Jones and Andreadis. It would sure be interesting to run across an anti-Dale, a transhumanist who really is a humanist as well -- someone whose intellectual specialty overlapped with Dale's enough that they really had something to say to each other. I can engage with Dale in certain areas, and I even agree with components of his critique, but he really deserves a much more profound engagement than I ever expect to give him.
I respond:

It is worth noting that Robot Cultists are rarely if ever dissuaded from their nonsense by the exposes generated by specialists in the scientific branches abused by transhumanoid claims, while I think that some who are initially susceptible to Robot Cult Belief are rendered too incredulous to make the plunge while others who do Believe arrive at disenchantment or assume a more critical temper Robot Cult formations cannot long survive when they work their way through discursive and cultural and political critiques of faith-based futurology. I think this is because the substance of the discourse is not actually scientific at all, but an abduction of scientific generalities or superficial forms in the service of faith-based initiatives doing quite different work than science proper is doing. In this respect, the critique of the superlative futurological claims of Robot Cultists is quite a bit like trying to critique climate-change denialism. Misinformation is promulgated by organizations who parochially profit from the effort, no question, but the key enablers of the problem are,
[one] a badly educated public in the context of a failure of pillar institutions that interface between the administrative, deliberative, and expert-knowledge layers of the instrumental register of public life and,

[two] the diversion of many of the key actors in each of these layers away from factual adjudication to subcultural signaling.
Climate change has become a culture war issue tangled up with the threatened identities of certain precarious mostly white mostly working class mostly patriarchial folks in ways that are no longer resolvable by empirical tests or by political compromise formations.

The Robot Cultist's faith in imminent AI, techno-longevity, bio-"enhancement," nano-abundance, digi-plenitude is caught up in comparable dynamisms to the extent that the sects of the Robot Cult function as marginal and defensive sub(cult)ures or identity-formations or movement-orientations conferring meta-narrative belief systems and social membership benefits in the context of extreme technodevelopmental distress, amplified techno-fetishistic consumerism, and the suffusion of public life with the deceptive and hyperbolizing norms and forms of promotion and marketing (this is the context in which both mainstream -- the assumptions and aspirations of neoliberal developmentalism, anti-deliberative corporate-military think-tank speak -- as well as the superlative futurological discourses of the Robot Cult operate).

To the extent that superlative (and also mainstream) futurology is a discourse operating at the level of, and often in the service of, (sub)culture it seems to me it is best grasped -- and critiqued -- in its rhetoric and not as a matter of "facts", even if its rhetoric is devoted to the production and affirmation and satisfaction of making pseudo-factual claims.

I happen to think the crisis exposed by the triumph of reactionary corporate-mobilized climate change denialism is much the same, one in which political, cultural, and discursive critiques are more efficacious than factual ones (even if it is also true that they must not stray from the relevant science, which remains absolutely indispensable). In a world when few will master all the relevant technoscience factually to adjudicate disputes on which their own flourishing and even survival depends in so many ways, it is all the more crucial to grasp the political necessity of ensuring accountability of the administration of policy both to the best warranted facts according to scientific consensus as well as to the actual diversity of stakeholders to public decisions.

There should be a far greater price paid for fraud and deliberate misinformation arising out of advertising, promotion, the financial sector, think-tanks, popular journalism, and so on. There should be much more policing of the boundaries of modes of discourse, what seeks to pass itself off as factual and not promotional, that which assumes the responsibilities of professionalism and the accountabilities of representation, and so on. Much that masquerades as truth-telling is actually advertizing, much that masquerades as speculation is actually fraud. Sometimes the masquerade rises to a level that might well be regarded as criminal, and this matters enormously. This is a crisis of accountability, responsibility, legitimation, and standards. As someone who has devoted his life to the study and teaching of theory (including a lot of theory that gets sloppily slapped with the label "postmodern") I am well aware that such standards are contingent, and must be open to interminable renegotiation else they become more trouble than they are worth, but this is no justification for jettisoning them or for the pretense that we can do without them, which amounts to a straightforward refusal of responsibility and an active solicitation for abuses in my view. Even when the crisis takes the form of the loss of the proper force of facticity, it is crucial to grasp the extent to which the locus of that crisis is political and cultural, as should be the lion's share of the critique which would re-invigorate that force by renewing the institutions and practices that mediate and enable it.

9 comments:

Chad Lott said...

I could be wrong here, but feel like the only real answer to the criticism Dale offers would be to first, actually develop the specific products the Robot Cultists claim will shift culture in the way they claim will happen when these products come to market and second, prove Robot Cultism was vital to this product development.

These products, were they to exist and work as advertised (likely not), would be profitable on their own and speak for themselves, which is really just another of Dale's points. You don't need to join a cult to enjoy the benefits of technology.

The second point is pretty unassailable, I guess.

jim said...

A little off topic, but I was over at the IEET website and saw that we are only 20 years from immortality. But the article was lacking something from your formula of "how to write a transhuminist article" so I added it in the comments.

I am now convinced that satire is impossible on the internet.

Dale Carrico said...

I doubt your comment will "make the cut." I did spy this exchange in the comments, however: "In just 20 years we will be immortals, have fusion energy and AI, if we have the courage to stand up to the deathists, the environmentalists, and the cognitively impaired. Onward Transhumanist soldiers!" to which the author responds: "Well said!" Skepticism is here identified with cognitive impairment -- a state of affairs that is, as you say, not exactly a fertile ground for functional satire. I mean, really what can one say? Presumably the only thing keeping techno-immortality and techno-sooperabundance from spontaneously emerging is people like me who are "deathists" for noticing we are mortal and "reactionaries" for noticing that stakeholder politics exists. Robot Cultists seem to think they are "soldiers" because they never tire of clapping louder. Science! In a world with any standards these people would be scrubbing urinals or processing extruded fast-food meat substitute for a living. Honestly.

Chad Lott said...

A stoner buddy of mine was wearing a Singularity inspired t-shirt from this place called Imaginary Foundation yesterday.

Their designs are mostly supposed to celebrate science and wonder (wishing), but to me they reach into the same kind of territory occupied by grey alien water bongs and glow in the dark Jimi Hendrix posters. Fun to look at while under the influence, but ultimately very silly.

The reason why I even bring this up is that I 've noticed this stuff creeping more into pop culture, but without being taken too seriously.

I wonder if the Singularity is going to be downgraded to a visual punchline like the noble unicorn.

Dale Carrico said...

I wonder if the Singularity is going to be downgraded to a visual punchline like the noble unicorn. It is well worth working to facilitate this outcome, since one alternative outcome is for it to function instead as the sort of ruinous foundation that idiocies like "free men free markets" made for generations of civilization dismantlement. The ramification of Robot Cult-adjacent institutes and think tanks associated with Oxford and Stanford and major corporations is not at all encouraging in this regard. Just saying.

Eudoxia said...

>I wonder if the Singularity is going to be downgraded to a visual punchline like the noble unicorn.

Seems likely, especially with all these new "spiritual transhumanism" things (Giulio Prisco, Jason Silva, the Confused Mormons, and people who talk about 'psi') and the uncritical acceptance of well-known occultists into the community (David Styles, president of EuCrio and invitied to speak at TransVision and Rachel Moren/Haywire/Mendelson/whatever).

I'd rather transhumanism consist of people roleplaying Molly from Neuromancer and cutting themselves up like Lepht Anonym. Not that it would be much better, but definitely an improvement.

Dale Carrico said...

I'd rather transhumanism consist of people roleplaying Molly from Neuromancer

I've told them a bazillion times, if they just want to be an sf fandom I am totally on board with it -- hell, I even read most of the same sf they go on about (thankfully I read more than that, too, they're a rather shockingly old-fashioned straight white guys clubhouse I find). But when they want to pretend that they are doing science, or doing science policy, or doing philosophy, or doing movement politics -- just, sorry. Those words and phrases actually mean things that Robot Cultists aren't equal to and which we cannot lose to the likes of 'em. As a discourse there are still absurdities to critique (even lovers of the lit do that) and as an organizational archipelago with real world members and ties there are still dangers to expose by muckrakers -- but even so, if they just want to geek out to Ghost in the Shell or whatever I'm the last person to cast aspersions. Dag, I'm a total queergeek myself!

Summerspeaker said...

I'd say I qualify as an anti-Dale. We have engaged in serious intellectual exchange. On the other hand, I represent queer anarchism more than mainstream transhumanism.

Dale Carrico said...

You're more Auntie Dale. But, then, certainly so am I. And, anyway, even on the transhumanoidal nonsense you are coming along nicely. I think of you as a long-term project.