Neither, actually. He’s just trying to make sense of nonsense. It’s not clear whether he’s managed to work his way free or remains entangled. He does, however, manage to demonstrate that the idea of a trans-humanist technological Singularity is bad metaphysics masquerading as technico-utopian possibility.
Slavoj Žižek, The Apocalypse of a Wired Brain, Critical Inquiry 46, (Summer 2020) 745-763.
Abstract: When the threat posed by the digitalization of our lives is debated in our media, the focus is usually on the new phase of capitalism called “surveillance capitalism”: a total digital control over our lives exerted by state agencies and private corporations. However, important as this “surveillance capitalism” is, it is not yet the true game changer; there is a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain-machine interface (“wired brain”). First, when our brain is connected to digital machines, we can cause things to happen in reality just by thinking about them; then, my brain is directly connected to another brain, so that another individual can directly share my experience. Extrapolated to its extreme, wired brain opens up the prospect of what Ray Kurzweil called Singularity, the divine-like global space of shared awareness. . . . Whatever the (dubious, for the time being) scientific status of this idea, it is clear that its realization will affect the basic features of humans as thinking/speaking beings: the eventual rise of Singularity will be apocalyptic in the complex meaning of the term: it will imply the encounter with a truth hidden in our ordinary human existence, like the entrance into a new post-human dimension, which cannot but be experienced as catastrophic, as the end of our world. But will we still be here to experience our immersion into Singularity in any human sense of the term?
I don’t know what Žižek is up to. His second paragraph (745-46):
Although the predominant image of apocalypse that haunts us today is the nightmare of a global ecological catastrophe, the prospect of a direct link between our brain and a digital machine (what Elon Musk calls a “neuralink”) also implies an apocalyptic dimension; extrapolated to its extreme, a neuralink opens up the prospect of what Ray Kurzweil terms “Singularity,” the divine-like global space of shared awareness. One should resist the temptation to proclaim that such a vision of the wired brain is an illusion or something from the far future—such a view is itself an escape from the fact that something new and unheard of is effectively emerging. We should not underestimate the shattering impact of collectively shared experience; even if such a shared experience will be realized in a much more modest way than today’s grandiose visions of Singularity, everything will change with it. Peter Sloterdijk was right to characterize Kurzweil as a new John the Baptist, a forerunner of a new form of posthumanity. Kurzweil perfectly captured the radical implications of a wired brain; he saw clearly that our entire vision of reality and our role in it will change.
If, if it happens. What’s he mean by that qualifier, “…will be realized in a much more modest way…”? He goes on (746): “What we mean by wired brain is the idea of a direct link between our mental processes and a digital machine—and that, through the mediation of a machine, we will be able to directly share our mental processes (experiences).” With that last assertion, direct sharing of mental processes, he gives the game away. There’s nothing modest about that. If that becomes possible, he’s right, everything will change.
Why grant that much? But what does he mean by “direct sharing”? What does anyone mean by such phrases? I’ve argued that the notion of direct brain-to-brain linkage is incoherent: Why we'll never be able to build technology for Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication. I note that the brain does not have any open I/O (input-output) “ports.” If it did then, of course, impulses coming into such a port would be identified as coming from some Other, their thoughts, directly. And, when we want to send thoughts directly to that Other, we send them out through such a port.
But, as I’ve said, the brain doesn’t have such things. So, regardless of all the technical details, what’s going on is we’re sending impulses back and forth between brains. But – and here’s the crucial point – there’s no way for a neuron to determine whether a pulse comes from the local brain (the one in which the neuron is located) or from a foreign brain. An electrochemical spike is an electrochemical spike; they’re all alike. Similarly, there’s no way a neuron can determine whether a pulse is destined for a terminal in the local brain or in a distant brain. I haven’t got the foggiest idea what massive – and I’m pretty sure it would have to be massive, millions of neurons – direct brain linkage would be like.
Massive confusion? Apocalypse? The end of history? Sure, why not?
Still, even if he gives away more technical feasibility that is warranted, Žižek does realize that there is something strange going on (755):
If we are dealing with superposition of multiple experiences that cannot be totalized into an ecstatic One, this means that there is no single Singularity but an inconsistent texture of shared experiences that, for structural reasons, always have to be limited—if these limits are stretched too far, my shared experience explodes into a nightmare. This brings us again to the question of power. Which regulatory mechanism will decide which experiences I will share with others, and who will control this mechanism? One thing is sure: one should discard as utopian the idea that I myself will be able to connect/disconnect my brain. And one should fully accept the fact that a wide all-encompassing link between minds cannot take place at the level of subjective experience but only at an objective level, as a com- plex network of machines that read my mental states. Such a vast synchronous collective experience is a dangerous myth. Plus, as our brains will be wired without us even being aware of it, a new form of freedom and power will arise that will reside simply in our being able to isolate ourselves from Singularity.
Later (757-58):
In short, the problem with the notion of Singularity is not that it is too radical or utopian but that it is not radical enough. It continues to locate the advent of Singularity within our common universe of intersubjectivity, ignoring how the eventual rise of Singularity will undermine the very basic presupposition of our intersubjective universe, the limitation on which our greatest achievements are based. […] When the direct link of our brain with the digital network passes a certain threshold (a quite realist prospect), the gap that separates our self-awareness from external reality will collapse (because our thoughts will be able to directly affect external reality—and vice versa—plus we will be in direct contact with other minds). Will we thereby lose our singularity (and with it our subjectivity) as well as our distance towards external reality?
And so forth. It is perhaps worth nothing that this article about an apocalypse ends with an Auschwitz joke.
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