I suppose the question can be posed as follows: is it possible to be disciplined by the complexities of sustaining extensive supply chains without monetary signals being sent from one link on the chain to next. I'm suggesting that it is possible to find the problem of coordination sufficiently disciplining if the main incentive is to remain and excel on your team, or get selected by another team, or found a team that would try to displace another team in the supply. chain. To be on a team is to supply and be supplied, to be in the loop and to be taken care of. I'm assuming that no supply chain needs to be built from scratch--they are mostly intact, while needing constant adjustment. For the market theorist, you can only know when and where those adjustments are needed when goods go unpurchased, demonstrating they weren't wanted or needed, which then means at least some of the commodities used to produce those were not needed, etc. But I think you could ask in advance and get a rough estimate, and have enough knowledge that deception would not be easy. If you wanted to found a new team, analogous to a new company, you would directly ask the other nodes on the chain if they'd rather have you than the present supplier. those best at supplying everyone with data--knowledge and information--would similarly be in the chain, helping everyone make such decisions. There's competition here, but conducted through communication based on the "currency" of data security.
I assume that Benjamin Bratton is right--there is a "Stack," planetary-scale computation, involving ubiquitous sensing and data collecting and analyzing technology. The articulation of all these connections seems to me an impressive technological fear, just not one you could highlight on TV. I think that a lot of technological development is going to be in the areas everyone seems to hate: "smartness," i.e., further integration and automation of surveillance, monitoring and self-regulation ("optimization"). This itself might generate new modes of energy extraction and use, transportation, robotization, war making (maybe peacemaking). I don't see what it would mean to oppose this, or in the name of what might one do so. Most of the right, whether the "sacred rights of the individual" right or "preserving my race" right will be obliterated--they have no answer to this, even as they happen to be the ones exposing the monstrosities of the system. The left won't do much better, as all "smartness" cuts against all their "equity" concerns (as they are already complaining). States will become increasingly dependent on high tech contractors, which will in the end replace the state. I'm only being a bit facetious if I say that data security companies are the new subject of history. At this point it really is a wretched economic-political order, including everything--the banks, corporations, governments, political parties, media education, etc.--that will increasing see its survival is at stake that will block the "tributary." I suppose in response to the specifics you lay out here I would say it's best to be more under the radar, and build up what will have to massive research-pedagogical institutes grounded in the originary hypothesis that will cut across the humanities and sciences.
I hope this is not getting tiresome, or insufficiently radar aware, but one more question… I can certainly appreciate how the state becomes dependent on data security companies. We already see huge bureaucracies that nonetheless have to spend big on outside consultants and contractors. But the dependency works both ways, no? Capital, or specific factions, need the state to advance their interests, which is what all those consultants are, on the one hand, for. How do you see contractors replacing the state without needing to keep it for its monetary, disciplinary, etc. powers? Or are you thinking that down the line a few capitalists will win out, end the game, and install a new tributary order, without permanent need of a new kind of (transitional) political party you have also thought about?
I'm not sure Thiel is right about technological stagnation and I don't know how to know. What should technological development look like? How fast should we be going? In which directions? Either you're in the sciences and you know what is happening or you approach these questions with a sci-fi imagination. His explanation accounts for nuclear power, I suppose, which, since it has existed for a long time, we can probably say it should be much further along. But otherwise, where is the authoritative account of scientific and technological development across all fields, measured against some optimal state? We're not returning to classical liberalism, whatever that would look like under contemporary infrastructural conditions, and apocalyptic thinking can be useful as a source of thought experiments, as long as you know the apocalypse will never look anything like you imagine it.
I don't really think about battling despair--I suppose that I see myself as writing for those immune to that. If we keep studying the conditions of production and exploitation of resentment, we can see how to reduce or convert it, and if we can see how that might be done, we could figure out ways to do it--and, in that case, while you'd probably never be able to declare victory in the war on resentment, there's no necessary limit on how much you can reduce it. Mimetic theory, Gans included, always seems to presuppose a constant level of resentment while nevertheless also presupposing that resentment can be addressed ("discharged," to put it in Gans's crude way) somehow. Both can't be true, unless we're cynically thinking of reducing our resentment by dumping it on others (but then we'd have to expect some blowback, so what's the point?). Any new "tributary" ordering would introduce some allocation and therefore new possibilities for resentment, but human culture has always been the attempt to anticipate, pre-empt and remedy resentment. So we can keep doing it, and getting better at it. This is why I've gotten so interested in the juridical lately--that's still the best means of lowering resentments we have, because it allows for disclosure, inquiry, dialogue, and precedent, as opposed to technological shortcuts (e.g., advanced defense systems), which also have their place, as long as they supplement rather than replace the juridical.
Thanks, as someone who hopes nuclear power can get back on track, i wonder if the juridical could help, to what extent can one commission it to look forward, to “free” us from images of explosions and Chernobyls? I imagine Thiel bases his comments on two things: 1) discussions he has with other venture capitalists about the dearth of investment opportunities; but this can’t be too compelling because bankable science surely needs to be prefigured by a lot of exploratory science which financiers may know little about. 2] refugees from academe looking for jobs, or grumbling insiders. If a lot of “autistic” science nerds/geniuses are looking for work, it suggests the woke system isn’t using talents well and besides China and Russia are developing new weapons systems and the West seems to have trouble maintaining even existing defence production. If the US keeps losing wars could a President, say, start turning things around by setting up high profile commissions into why science or tech isn’t what we might hope it to be? Or, however important that might be in motivating people, is it basically unknowable until we are doing what we can to advance science? Do you have to capitalise, say, “green” energy to find out if it’s really green or just cynical investment/sabotage? Will a new battery or solar tech that makes it really green really develop? Can a tributary order, however less destructive and hence preferable, be much superior in crystal balling?
The world’s most famous Girardian is giving public talks where he argues that the present collapse of scientific or technical progress (he only sees some significant progress in computer science but even there wonders if that is ending) is due to apocalyptic thinking and a deep fear of what destruction our technical objects, like nukes, can do. So, as long, i suppose, as the grant money keeps coming, the powers and main opinion in the universities and related institutions are happy to keep busy achieving little (which makes me wonder if the whole virology establishment fooled itself into thinking they had actually done something world-destroying with Gain of Function research, but the real destruction was in the fearful, and sinister, response to a virus that hasn’t been truly exceptional, because they haven’t made much real progress in understanding the ecology in which viruses interact…) Yet as a Girardian, I imagine it’s not easy thinking beyond the apocalyptic; indeed Thiel is simply telling his audiences (maybe he thinks this is all they can grasp for now) that the solution is a return to “classical liberalism” as the font of free inquiry, i.e. trash the woke and the desire for a global government that stops anything from happening.
Anyway, I’m wondering if you see your project, the call for disciplines to circle back to ritual, as a way of battling apocalyptic despair. Just as you have argued in the past that we can make resentment obsolete, I’m struck by the call here to make violence unthinkable, and while i can begin to intuit how that will require a state with data mastery acting pre-emptively, I cannot entirely get my head around how quick and decisive state action to nip violence in the bud makes violence (or resentment) unthinkable… or do you mean not unimaginable but just practically undoable, in which case the apocalyptic imagination could become quite productive?
I suppose the question can be posed as follows: is it possible to be disciplined by the complexities of sustaining extensive supply chains without monetary signals being sent from one link on the chain to next. I'm suggesting that it is possible to find the problem of coordination sufficiently disciplining if the main incentive is to remain and excel on your team, or get selected by another team, or found a team that would try to displace another team in the supply. chain. To be on a team is to supply and be supplied, to be in the loop and to be taken care of. I'm assuming that no supply chain needs to be built from scratch--they are mostly intact, while needing constant adjustment. For the market theorist, you can only know when and where those adjustments are needed when goods go unpurchased, demonstrating they weren't wanted or needed, which then means at least some of the commodities used to produce those were not needed, etc. But I think you could ask in advance and get a rough estimate, and have enough knowledge that deception would not be easy. If you wanted to found a new team, analogous to a new company, you would directly ask the other nodes on the chain if they'd rather have you than the present supplier. those best at supplying everyone with data--knowledge and information--would similarly be in the chain, helping everyone make such decisions. There's competition here, but conducted through communication based on the "currency" of data security.
I assume that Benjamin Bratton is right--there is a "Stack," planetary-scale computation, involving ubiquitous sensing and data collecting and analyzing technology. The articulation of all these connections seems to me an impressive technological fear, just not one you could highlight on TV. I think that a lot of technological development is going to be in the areas everyone seems to hate: "smartness," i.e., further integration and automation of surveillance, monitoring and self-regulation ("optimization"). This itself might generate new modes of energy extraction and use, transportation, robotization, war making (maybe peacemaking). I don't see what it would mean to oppose this, or in the name of what might one do so. Most of the right, whether the "sacred rights of the individual" right or "preserving my race" right will be obliterated--they have no answer to this, even as they happen to be the ones exposing the monstrosities of the system. The left won't do much better, as all "smartness" cuts against all their "equity" concerns (as they are already complaining). States will become increasingly dependent on high tech contractors, which will in the end replace the state. I'm only being a bit facetious if I say that data security companies are the new subject of history. At this point it really is a wretched economic-political order, including everything--the banks, corporations, governments, political parties, media education, etc.--that will increasing see its survival is at stake that will block the "tributary." I suppose in response to the specifics you lay out here I would say it's best to be more under the radar, and build up what will have to massive research-pedagogical institutes grounded in the originary hypothesis that will cut across the humanities and sciences.
I hope this is not getting tiresome, or insufficiently radar aware, but one more question… I can certainly appreciate how the state becomes dependent on data security companies. We already see huge bureaucracies that nonetheless have to spend big on outside consultants and contractors. But the dependency works both ways, no? Capital, or specific factions, need the state to advance their interests, which is what all those consultants are, on the one hand, for. How do you see contractors replacing the state without needing to keep it for its monetary, disciplinary, etc. powers? Or are you thinking that down the line a few capitalists will win out, end the game, and install a new tributary order, without permanent need of a new kind of (transitional) political party you have also thought about?
I'm not sure Thiel is right about technological stagnation and I don't know how to know. What should technological development look like? How fast should we be going? In which directions? Either you're in the sciences and you know what is happening or you approach these questions with a sci-fi imagination. His explanation accounts for nuclear power, I suppose, which, since it has existed for a long time, we can probably say it should be much further along. But otherwise, where is the authoritative account of scientific and technological development across all fields, measured against some optimal state? We're not returning to classical liberalism, whatever that would look like under contemporary infrastructural conditions, and apocalyptic thinking can be useful as a source of thought experiments, as long as you know the apocalypse will never look anything like you imagine it.
I don't really think about battling despair--I suppose that I see myself as writing for those immune to that. If we keep studying the conditions of production and exploitation of resentment, we can see how to reduce or convert it, and if we can see how that might be done, we could figure out ways to do it--and, in that case, while you'd probably never be able to declare victory in the war on resentment, there's no necessary limit on how much you can reduce it. Mimetic theory, Gans included, always seems to presuppose a constant level of resentment while nevertheless also presupposing that resentment can be addressed ("discharged," to put it in Gans's crude way) somehow. Both can't be true, unless we're cynically thinking of reducing our resentment by dumping it on others (but then we'd have to expect some blowback, so what's the point?). Any new "tributary" ordering would introduce some allocation and therefore new possibilities for resentment, but human culture has always been the attempt to anticipate, pre-empt and remedy resentment. So we can keep doing it, and getting better at it. This is why I've gotten so interested in the juridical lately--that's still the best means of lowering resentments we have, because it allows for disclosure, inquiry, dialogue, and precedent, as opposed to technological shortcuts (e.g., advanced defense systems), which also have their place, as long as they supplement rather than replace the juridical.
Thanks, as someone who hopes nuclear power can get back on track, i wonder if the juridical could help, to what extent can one commission it to look forward, to “free” us from images of explosions and Chernobyls? I imagine Thiel bases his comments on two things: 1) discussions he has with other venture capitalists about the dearth of investment opportunities; but this can’t be too compelling because bankable science surely needs to be prefigured by a lot of exploratory science which financiers may know little about. 2] refugees from academe looking for jobs, or grumbling insiders. If a lot of “autistic” science nerds/geniuses are looking for work, it suggests the woke system isn’t using talents well and besides China and Russia are developing new weapons systems and the West seems to have trouble maintaining even existing defence production. If the US keeps losing wars could a President, say, start turning things around by setting up high profile commissions into why science or tech isn’t what we might hope it to be? Or, however important that might be in motivating people, is it basically unknowable until we are doing what we can to advance science? Do you have to capitalise, say, “green” energy to find out if it’s really green or just cynical investment/sabotage? Will a new battery or solar tech that makes it really green really develop? Can a tributary order, however less destructive and hence preferable, be much superior in crystal balling?
The world’s most famous Girardian is giving public talks where he argues that the present collapse of scientific or technical progress (he only sees some significant progress in computer science but even there wonders if that is ending) is due to apocalyptic thinking and a deep fear of what destruction our technical objects, like nukes, can do. So, as long, i suppose, as the grant money keeps coming, the powers and main opinion in the universities and related institutions are happy to keep busy achieving little (which makes me wonder if the whole virology establishment fooled itself into thinking they had actually done something world-destroying with Gain of Function research, but the real destruction was in the fearful, and sinister, response to a virus that hasn’t been truly exceptional, because they haven’t made much real progress in understanding the ecology in which viruses interact…) Yet as a Girardian, I imagine it’s not easy thinking beyond the apocalyptic; indeed Thiel is simply telling his audiences (maybe he thinks this is all they can grasp for now) that the solution is a return to “classical liberalism” as the font of free inquiry, i.e. trash the woke and the desire for a global government that stops anything from happening.
Anyway, I’m wondering if you see your project, the call for disciplines to circle back to ritual, as a way of battling apocalyptic despair. Just as you have argued in the past that we can make resentment obsolete, I’m struck by the call here to make violence unthinkable, and while i can begin to intuit how that will require a state with data mastery acting pre-emptively, I cannot entirely get my head around how quick and decisive state action to nip violence in the bud makes violence (or resentment) unthinkable… or do you mean not unimaginable but just practically undoable, in which case the apocalyptic imagination could become quite productive?