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

Sunday, February 09, 2014

Publish or Cherish

It's still a source of bemusement for me that the posts of mine that draw continued attention are more or less sloganizing riffs veering into incendiary rants, The Unbearable Stasis of "Accelerating Change" and An Open Letter to the Robot Cultists. A comment at io9 has sent a few hundred eyeballs to "Unbearable Stasis" just this weekend. One of the reasons I am so eager for the still-delayed-for-whatever-reason Existenz publication of Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains is that it consists of a comparatively pithy but comprehensive delineation of the critique that is the submerged berg enabling the iceberg tip of the pyrotechnics of these more popular pieces. I'd really like to be able to refer people who find their way here through links to "Unbearable Stasis" or the "Open Letter" to the more substantial critique on which they depend, which otherwise is scattered throughout years of contributions to the Superlative Summary. The impressionistic irritation in a rant is a less reliable organizer than the sustained arguments of a critique. Come what may, I am working on a considerably expanded, more book-length version of the Existenz essay, which includes much more history and muckraking about the advocates and organizational life of the various sects of the Robot Cult than an essay pitched to philosophers could support, entitled, for now, The Future Is A Fraud: The Reactionary Worlds of Futurological Discourse and Futurist Sub(cult)ures. I don't have a publisher yet, but there seems to be some interest in the thing at least, so cross your fingers, and by all means suggest snippets from posts past that deserve inclusion in such a larger work. A separate work elaborating the specifically anti-environmentalist work of futurological ideology is also taking shape. We shall see, these things tend not to come to anything.

8 comments:

jimf said...

There's certainly plenty of muck to rake, from these guys:

5 Obnoxious Libertarian Oligarchs Who Earned Fortunes
from the Government They’d Like to Destroy
Richard Eskow
AlterNet
Feb 9, 2014
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/eskow20140209

right back to Sinclair Lewis's Georgie F. Babbitt.

"But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close
I must call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming
year. The worst menace to sound government is not the
avowed socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover—the
long-haired gentry who call themselves “liberals” and “radicals”
and “non-partisan” and “intelligentsia” and God only knows how
many other trick names! Irresponsible teachers and professors
constitute the worst of this whole gang, and I am ashamed to say
that several of them are on the faculty of our great State
University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be
known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who
seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to
hoboes and roustabouts.

Those profs are the snakes to be scotched -- they and all their
milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a
fault, but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers
and journalists: if we’re going to pay them our good money,
they’ve got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for
rational prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-
finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you
that during this golden coming year it’s just as much our duty to
bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real
estate and gather in all the good shekels we can.

Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the
ideal of American manhood and culture isn’t a lot of cranks sitting
around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a
God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who
belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the
Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red
Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations
of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing
Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose
answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that’ll teach the grouches
and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle
Samuel, U.S.A.!"

-- George F. Babbitt, founder of the Tea Party
(in Sinclair Lewis, _Babbitt_, 1922)

Esebian said...

But surely the soopergenius digirati netizens that frequent such sites will be more than capable of navigating your blog, finding the more detailed essays and spare some minutes of their precious WoW gaming time to read and understand their content, right? RIGHT?

jimf said...

> One of the reasons I am so eager for the still-delayed-for-whatever-reason
> Existenz publication of Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains is that. . .
> I'd really like to be able to refer people who find their way here through
> links to "Unbearable Stasis" or the "Open Letter" to the more substantial critique
> on which they depend. . .

Presumably, that means people like this guy:

http://oaklandfuturist.com/dale-carrico-puts-down-transhumanists/#sthash.4BpeHfsu.dpbs
----------------
Dale Carrico loves to put the smackdown on transhumanists
Posted on January 24, 2013 by Scott Jackisch

. . .

Carrico makes a lot of good points in Superlative Futurology. . .

It seems that Carrico has a good understanding of the futurist scene and
some valid criticism of it’s excesses. But I will need to dig into his work
more to convince myself that he isn’t a bit deluded about the nature of
politics and technology. Nonetheless, he is such an interesting writer that
I will enjoy discovering which parts of his work are bullshit and which
are not.
=====

On the other hand, the same writer says:

"I guess Carrico is a 'critical theorist' and rhetorician. . .
He seems to be some sort of leftist post-modernist, and he loves to trot
out intricate and embellished language that almost reminds me of those
continental types like the Situationists. I really enjoy Carrico’s writings.
Which is to say, I enjoy whatever shards of meaning fall out when I attempt
to unravel the tangle of his rhetorical empurplement.

I mean, check this out. . .

Tell me that doesn’t remind you of this other Marxist:

. . .

- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

I mean, what the hell are these guys saying? But this isn’t a rant against
post-modernist obfuscation, it’s a post about Carrico’s criticism of futurology. . ."


I fear somebody like this may not be edified by "a comparatively pithy but
comprehensive delineation of the critique that is the submerged berg
enabling the iceberg tip of the pyrotechnics of these more popular pieces."

;->

(And what are "Brickbracks", anyway?)

Dale Carrico said...

Perkins in the poster child for this bad behavior at the moment, for which he will no doubt be rewarded in the fullness of time with who knows how many more bazillions. Of course, three years ago I called out two of the obnoxious libertopians Eskow skewers, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk as the Koch Brothers of Superlative Futurology, and I would indeed return to them in my muckraky segments. Since Peter Thiel gives his money to the singularitarian sect with which both extropian and "democratic" transhumanoid sects are feuding I suppose that is why IEET saw fit to allow a piece that swats so many techbrotarian philanthronarcissists. I daresay the neoliberal eugenicists and greenwashers funding the Oxford Future of Humanity might not be deemed to warrant the same sort of spotlight.

As for our Oakland Futurist, I never cease to be amused by those who declare their lack of wit a deficiency in the writers they give up on. This sort of ignorant impatient insensitive uncritical anti-intellectualism has long been an American staple of course -- no doubt it ruggedizes our bleakly conformist individualism around here -- but it is especially curious the way self-declared sooper-genius technocratic futurological elites so blithely parade their inadequacies in public.

jimf said...

> Since Peter Thiel gives his money to the singularitarian sect with
> which both extropian and "democratic" transhumanoid sects are feuding
> I suppose that is why IEET saw fit to allow a piece that swats so many
> techbrotarian philanthronarcissists. I daresay the neoliberal eugenicists
> and greenwashers funding the Oxford Future of Humanity might not be
> deemed to warrant the same sort of spotlight.

Speaking of which. . .

I actually registered with "Ethical Technology" a few days
ago in order to post a comment on this article:

How Many Methods of Mind-Uploading?
John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions
Posted: Jan 30, 2014
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/danaher20140130

The author categorizes "methods of mind uploading" according
to a 2-by-2 matrix:

Off-line/Bottom-up: Reconstruction via scan [the slice'n'dice'n'simulate method]
Off-line/Top-down: Reconstruction from behavior [the Kurzweil "simulate my dad
from his books and papers" method]
On-line/Bottom-up: Gradual replacement of parts [the Moravec transfer]
On-line/Top-down: Blank

The author goes on to say: "Is there a fourth method? . . .
The most striking fact about this proposed framework is that
one of the grids is empty. This raises the obvious question:
is there an (as yet underexplored) fourth method for MST
[Mind-Substrate Transfer]? . . . The approach would involve the
use of a synthetic robot partner (almost like a symbiont)."

I mentioned in my comment that the 1975 film version of _The Stepford
Wives_ (I haven't seen the Nicole Kidman remake) has Katharine Ross
being replaced by a robot duplicate after she's spoken a list
of words into a tape recorder (on some pretext), and presumably had
other elements of her mannerisms and behavior recorded without
her knowledge, and is finally, when she is no longer needed, is
replaced by the robot duplicate after being strangled to death
by it. (At the point in the movie when she is confronted by
the robot twisting a scarf around its hands, the robot also still
has completely black eyes, "the better to frighten you with, my dear".)

Apparently this comment did not pass muster with the strict
moderation policies currently in effect at IEET, which include:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/5911
--------------
IEET’s “Buddhist Right Speech” Policy - 100 Day Anniversa[r]y
Posted: Sep 24, 2012

. . .

What is Buddhist Right Speech? According to
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html,
Right Speech [abbreviated] is:

. . .

4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth.

. . .

Implementation of the new policy will be handled by three moderators:
Alex McGilvery, aka “Pastor Alex”, Peter Wicks - our site’s most
frequent commenter in the last two months, and Hank Pellissier - IEET
Managing Director. The triumvirate represents a roughly equivalent
cross-section of IEET readers: Alex is a Canadian Christian,
Peter Wicks is European agnostic, Hank is a USA atheist. James Hughes,
IEET’s Executive Director, is a former Buddhist monk. . .
=====

"Right speech" -- ya gotta love it!

Giulio Prisco thinks so too:

--------------
Giulio Prisco
Budapest
Jun 12, 2012

Congratulations to Hank, James and the new co-moderators Alex and Peter
for this brilliant idea.

I will do my best to follow the Buddhist Right Speech rules here, and
I am sure others will do the same and show that believers and atheists,
libertarian and liberals, radical transhumanists and more cautious
moderates, can discuss hot issues politely and respectfully.
=====

I guess that means no silly movie references.

Or maybe it just means no comments at all from anybody who's
run afoul of Dr. J in the past.

Who can say?

;->

Dale Carrico said...

White guy boutique Buddhism is so totally like spiritual you know? No negative nellyism getting in the way of can-do techno-transcendentality. Techbros save the world again!

jimf said...

> Techbros save the world again!

Found on a blog:

http://manboobz.com/2013/08/23/roosh-v-forum-members-baffled-that-fat-woman-doesnt-welcome-sexual-harassment/comment-page-16/#comment-346157
--------------
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death
of Sarumanatee13. He came to us from the USENET that is now
forgotten, that first Internet that died so long ago in the
Eternal September. Verily did he achieve high karma by adhering
to the community standards; never did he rejoice in the posting
of a first comment and wisely did he use the upvote and downvote
buttons. He did remain pure of the three sins of Lesswrong,
for he did not claim his god exists, nor argue for a universally
compelling morality, nor yet claim he had an easy way to make
superintelligent AI safe.

“Now let all who are gathered here imagine together the all-knowing
and all-powerful AI that might exist in the future and beseech
it in its infinite wisdom and benevolence not to torture
Sarumanatee13 for all eternity, for he did faithfully donate
all his income to the cause and didst live on ramen in his
parents’ basement that the AI might be brought forth to save
the universe. O AI, construct now this prayer in your memory
banks by deriving it from first principles and heed it.

“In the name of the Turing, and of the Kurzweil, and of the Holy Yudkowsky, amen.”
=====

jimf said...

> Found on a blog:

From the same comment thread.

It doesn't sound like things have changed much, in the decade since
I last had direct contact with any of these people.

http://manboobz.com/2013/08/23/roosh-v-forum-members-baffled-that-fat-woman-doesnt-welcome-sexual-harassment/comment-page-15/#comment-346000
-----------------
Argenti Aertheri
August 30, 2013 at 8:08 am

“He’s making a lot of people’s lives less happy.”

Besides my hatred of misleading statistics, THAT. My Yudcultist
honestly thinks he has to get a job that pays as much as possible
to aid in the quest for AI — this kid’s smart, he could get most
any job he wanted, but instead of picking a field he enjoys,
he’s going to pick whatever seems to pay best. And instead of
giving it to organizations that do current, practical, hands on aid,
it’ll go to Yudkowsky to fund…what exactly? Just what is he
doing with all this money? Not program testing any degree of AI,
seeing how he can’t program shit.

(FTR, MSF // Doctors without Borders is my charity of choice, because
starting medical programs in war zones and famines and underdeveloped
regions, working against infectious disease that’d otherwise go
untreated, treating malnutrition…yeah, far more useful than
dumping money into Yudkowsky’s fund for what exactly)
===

http://manboobz.com/2013/08/23/roosh-v-forum-members-baffled-that-fat-woman-doesnt-welcome-sexual-harassment/comment-page-15/#comment-346007
pecunium | August 30, 2013 at 8:57 am
-----------------
He’s supporting the most important man in the history of mankind.

That’s the takeaway (and Yudkowsky is willing to tell this to people,
face to face. It’s amazing to watch, and only a sense of politesse
(and utter ignorance as to just how serious he was) kept me from
laughing at him when he said it to me (in more than one form,
in the course of that evening).

He’s sold them a bill of goods; first he makes them certain
The Singularity will happen (but some how it’s only once, not an
infinite number of good/bad/friendly/unfriendly/neutral AIs)
and that if HE isn’t on the ground floor of the philosophy of AI,
in the design phase, then it WILL be unfriendly; because it
won’t be, “rational”.

It hokum. It’s internally inconstent, in ways that make it unsavory,
and I think unsalvageable.
===