YouTube:
Robert Wright and Nikita Petrov discuss Trump 2.0, Peter Thiel’s Antichrist theory, Covid, the rise of “inner emigration” as survival strategy, normalized warfare in Russia, the reality-distorting effects of deepfakes, and more—all in light of invoking W. B. Yeats to ask: Are things falling apart?
0:00 Teaser
0:59 What is Bob doing in Qatar?
4:04 "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Why Yeats felt this way
7:37 Peter Thiel's Antichrist theory
9:46 Nikita: COVID was a weird time, and nothing has been the same since
14:57 Why Bob feels things are falling apart
18:28 Were things ever in order?
19:53 "Inner emigration": tuning out the world as self-care
22:38 A reaction to a drone strike: "Loud noises don't wake me up"
25:57 Young people are turning away from social media
27:05 When Spain lost all power and cellular coverage
30:36 War as a "major inconvenience"
34:22 Bob's prediction about Ukraine's future retaliation for Pokrovsk
38:56 Nikita's impressions from Europe
42:07 Nonzero Reading Club THIS SATURDAY: Norbert Wiener's God & Golem, Inc.
47:08 Deepfakes and the future of news
52:04 Russia's first humanoid robot falls down
Note that Wright was born in 1957. At roughly 16:23 he notes that:
I grew I kind of came of age entered adolescence amid the the turmoil of the late 60s and was in fact in San Francisco uh the epicenter of it in the US kind of when I was 12 13 years old. Um and so I don't know I you would think that would kind of have anured me to it. Um, for whatever reason, this seems a lot worse than that did to me, at least at the time. I mean, where the US is, the degree of polarization, nature of the polarization, and so on. Um, but it isn't just that and different people talk about different things when you ask them if things are falling apart. I mean, there is the whole international thing with uh Trump really almost making a point of establishing that the rules just don't apply.
I'm a decade older that Wright and so arguably have lived through more of the political and cultural turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s (though I was not in San Francisco). By the time he was in his teens the war in Vietnam was over, as was the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, but I experienced those, not to mention a steelworkers' strike the shut down the steel industry for four months. I agree with his observation that the current period seems more chaotic than things appeared back then. Is this an illusion of some sort, or are things currently more disordered? I'm not quite sure.
Wright's written a Substack post on this theme: Are Things Falling Apart?
Very much more chaotic now. And with marked less assurance of an eventual stable future for the working and middle class.
ReplyDeleteYes, the future is much murkier now.
DeleteAnd the turning back of what were long fought for gains -- abortion, the civil rights act -- has contributed to the morass of uncertainty.
DeleteBill said "Is this an illusion of some sort, or are things currently more disordered? I'm not quite sure."
ReplyDeleteCategory reconfiguration to hide usurpation of prior norms enabling the texhbro's & Trumpians to forge new category (errors ).
"Perhaps the most important consequence of high-tech modernism for the contemporary moral political economy is how it weaves hierarchy and data-gathering into the warp and woof of everyday life, replacing visible feedback loops with invisible ones, and suggesting that highly mediated outcomes are in fact the unmediated expression of people's own true wishes." From...
February 28 2023
"The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism Open Access
Henry Farrell, Marion Fourcade
...
"High-tech modernism and high modernism are born from the same impulse to exert control, but are articulated in fundamentally different ways, with quite different consequences for the construction of the social and economic order. The contradictions between these two moral economies, and their supporting institutions, generate many of the key struggles of our times.
"Both bureaucracy and computation enable an important form of social power: the power to classify.5
...
https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/152/1/225/115009/The-Moral-Economy-of-High-Tech-Modernism
Bill, I some how feel "Both bureaucracy and computation enable an important form of social power: the power to classify" are relevant for Homo Ludens, as reclassifying Economicus >> Ludens needs to usurp "an important form of social power: the power to classify"... countered by HighTech Modernism.. "replacing visible feedback loops with invisible ones, and suggesting that highly mediated outcomes are in fact the unmediated expression of people's own true wishes."
Thanks.
Seren Dipity
And fellow travellers re Homo Ludens;
ReplyDelete"homo reciprocans ". From...
February 28 2023
Mobilizing in the Interest of Others
Margaret Levi,
Zachary Ugolnik
Author and Article Information
Daedalus (2023) 152 (1): 7–18.
https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01955
Abstract
A new moral political economy will revise capitalist democracy to ensure flourishing for all. Its principles derive from the recognition that humans are social animals who benefit from reciprocity and cooperation. We argue for attention to mobilizing strategies and governance arrangements that facilitate prosocial behavior and overcome the divisions-racial, political, and otherwise-that block awareness of common interests. We advocate for an expanded and inclusive community of fate whose members see their interests and destines as intertwined.
...
"All of those involved in this volume evoke some form of sociality and cooperation as linchpins of their arguments. They draw on evolutionary theory, psychology, network theory, and findings from research on care. They experiment with different terminology, for example, homo reciprocans developed by Samuel Bowles and Herb Gintis, or sapiens integra advocated by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Hilary Cottam.8
"The starting place of a moral political economy is the twofold assumption that, first, humans are social animals albeit intentional, boundedly rational, and individuated, and, second, they benefit from reciprocity and cooperation. The first assumption is incontrovertible, even if the sociality of humans has not yet been absorbed into orthodox economics or all choice models.9 The second is the one we will explore in this essay, and that others in this volume also explore, and attempt to scale beyond the bounds of the small group and into the realm of the larger political economy. And we are not alone. Some very significant arguments are beginning to emerge that draw on these assumptions.10
...
https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/152/1/7/115003/Mobilizing-in-the-Interest-of-Others
Cheers,
Seren "homo reciprocans ludens" Dipity
Thanks for these, SD.
Delete