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@schulzb589 I accept that I haven't given a proof of this impossibility, but I believe the concerns I've laid out could probably be formalised in a way that would lead to one, though it'd involve something like a combinatoric diagonalisation similar to Russell's paradox.

 @paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 To state my issue in a more philosophical way, I think the desire to combinatorially totalise mathematical syntax is an effect of something like a transcendental illusion, what I sometimes call the Mythos of Logos.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 It's the Leibnizian desire to obviate creative dialogical interaction (dialectical reason) by providing a deductive system (monological reason) that would allow us to simply 'shut up and calculate'; the desire to obviate the pragmatic autonomy of discovery by automating it.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 It doesn't matter how many times this desire is betrayed by its own formal tools: Russell, Godel, Turing, Chaitin, etc.; it doesn't matter that these betrayals are what drive the externalisation of thought by producing new tools to automate computation. It always comes back.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 The desire to brute force reality, be it mathematical or empirical, is always lying in wait, whispering seemingly 'reasonable' lies about what is and isn't rationally possible. This is as close as I come to endorsing Heidegger and Adorno's worries about technoscience.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 But for me, technoscience is not generating an external force that saps our critical awareness ('instrumental reason') or disguises the hidden mysteries of human life (Gestell). Its *legitimate* will to power is being betrayed by the very pragmatic instincts that it cultivates.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 This is a broader cultural issue that extends well beyond the bounds of philosophy of computer science, but the latter is the Archimedean point from which maximal rational leverage can be achieved in the forever war on such rational betrayal. That's the gambit of neorationalism.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 But that's merely the most *abstract* line of attack, and there are also a more *concrete* tactics to be deployed in the war against the self-betrayal of freedom. This is where contemporary rationalism bleeds into contemporary Prometheanism: https://t.co/6UcpWWJX8y
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 To take one strand of such Prometheanism, the project of left-accelerationism (l/acc) is to cultivate and reinforce freedom's tendency to expand itself through any means necessary, insofar as this is an ultimate end (categorical imperative) implicit in rational agency itself.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 I'm a Kantian, which means I believe that normative autonomy (qua self-legislation) is an *end in itself*, but I'm also a Spinozist/Foucauldian, which means I believe that the causal underpinnings of such autonomy are something like *means in themselves*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 This notion of a means-in-itself as opposed to a means to a given range of ends is what @benedict calls a 'platform', and the integrated platform architecture that enables autonomous agency as such is what @bratton calls 'The Stack'. These are the concrete foundations of freedom.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Freedom's self-betrayal is the tendency of these platforms toward decadence: to retard, disarticulate, and generate points of leverage that some 'users' (putative 'owners') can use to exert and accumulate power over others ('capital') all at the expense of growing agency.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton l/acc has always understood itself as the project of untying the knots that freedom has tied itself in: egalitarian emancipation as an unsnarling of the forces that drive freedom's tendency to ratchet itself, and thereby escape any seemingly 'natural' trap it's been caught up in.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton This is why my own (limited) contribution to the #ACCELERATE reader (https://t.co/bg0QgFT7jK) was to insist on the incorporation of Veblen alongside Marx and Federov as a precursor of contemporary accelerationism.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton As I noted when I shared this article (https://t.co/ST58FHFdZc), it's a tragedy that The Theory of the Leisure Class overshadows The Theory of the Business Enterprise, which presents the most concise and convincing alternative to the normative framework of Marxism that I've seen.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton It's not a complete alternative, or even an entirely incompatible one. I mean to say that it's perhaps the most significant theoretical critique of political economy after Capital. It tells a different story about the internal struggles of capitalism and their inevitable destiny.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Veblen posits two tendencies that are intertwined within capitalism: the machine process, which is the autocatalytic tendency of *industry* to ratchet human capacity, and the pecuniary drive, which is the autocatalytic tendency of *commerce* to maximise profit/accumulate capital.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton He claims that these competing forms of autocatalysis are in some sense symbiotic: industry provides commerce with its products and services ('the real economy'), while commerce ('the market') modulates the process of industrial refactoring, revision, and expansion.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Nevertheless, he believes that they are in conflict: the machine process articulates and expands the industrial means (platforms) that constitute the economic base of freedom, while the pecuniary drive will happily sabotage them to seek sources of *rent* and accumulate *capital*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The separation of these tendencies is precisely what Nick Land denies in the opening of the 'Teleoplexy' piece that closes the reader (https://t.co/kLgs7WTG0d). This is the crucial explanatory (as opposed to normative) disagreement in the debate between between l/acc and r/acc.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Land is thus constitutively unable to even comprehend the conflict that Veblen sees here, which is a deep irony, given that he is the consummate thinker of cosmic conflict (https://t.co/CTjHHm50Ei).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Rather than inevitable technocapital singularity (or a diverse eschatology), in which artificial intelligence bootstraps itself into existence like a nightmare god (or pantheon) travelling back from the future, Veblen foresees futures dominated either by industry or commerce.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The choice is between a return to some neofeudal arrangement in which the old hierarchies of power are emulated on a monetary virtual machine (commerce wins), and a technocratic system in which expertise is cultivated and cultivates freedom in turn (industry wins).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton For anyone who has been paying attention to the evolution of neoliberal capitalism over the last 40 years, the idea that commerce will reimplement feudal structures within a putatively market based system will sound not just plausible, but all too familiar (cf. privatisation).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The real difference between Marx and Veblen is that Marx sees the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary class destined to fight (and win) the war against capitalists, whereas Veblen believes this is the destiny of engineers, who may well lose without *class consciousness*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton There are plenty of problems with Veblen's position, not least an obsession with *optimising efficiency* that is itself a facet of the Mythos of Logos (https://t.co/wzlEQ54zwJ). Bataille's celebration of *energetic excess* is a useful corrective to this (https://t.co/ZaSBrgcWPw).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton But the idea that engineers need to develop class consciousness, that they must understand the normative parameters of the role that they play within the industrial system, is itself a powerful corrective to persistent Marxist nostalgia for earlier forms of industrial labour.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton In the age of automation (https://t.co/HTqzcrm5i8), as work becomes increasingly detached from technics (https://t.co/NssAJX05IZ) while the core and periphery of the workforce are divided into those with *jobs* and those with *gigs*, the revolutionary parameters have shifted.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton To bring us full circle, and return to computation as both a locus of labour and a means of automation, nowhere is the conflict between the machine process and the pecuniary drive more obvious than in software development and the wider tech industry that encompasses it.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Is there a better way to describe the conflict between the coalitions of the willing that expand and maintain the open source software on which the Stack is run, and the bloated over-managed edifice of commercial software development that parasitises it? It's the exemplary case.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton As Richard Stalman might put it, software should be free not in the commercial sense, but in the political sense: free as in freedom. This has long been the rallying cry of industrial hackers fighting an endless war against commercial sabotage. There's your class consciousness.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Of course, there's more to the economy than software, and there are always more proletarians than engineers, but the accelerationist unsnarling of productive forces required to defeat the autocatalysis of commerce and its neofeudal destiny demands solidarity between the two.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton I reject every purported opposition between the technoscientific expansion of freedom and the 'authentic' realities of human social life (https://t.co/Sp2C7pVLHG). Resist that nostalgia for a more simple time that hides in your fantasies of the future. Kill the Mythos inside you.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Even if you want to retain the term 'communism' for the Promethean project of collective emancipation that brings about the end of capitalism and opens the door to something else (post-capitalism), you must destroy the perfect commune inside your head (https://t.co/aa2rcbOc40)
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton And that's how you get from the critique of computational reason to the techno-political opportunism of left-accelerationism: https://t.co/KM0mXTntJ6
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton @threadreaderapp unroll

More from pete wolfendale

pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
This is what happens when you train neural networks largely on tone and its stylistic relics. They pick up formal features of arguments (not so much fallacies as tics) that have almost nothing to do with semantic content (focus on connotation over implication).


This is a secular problem in the discipline. It's got nothing to do with the Analytic/Continental split in the anglophone world. They've both got the same ramifying signal/noise problem, it's just that the styles (tics and connotations) are different in each pedagogical context.

And this is before we start talking about tone policing and topic policing, which are both rife and essentially make the peer review journal system completely unfit for purpose, populated as it is by a random sampling of pedants selecting for syntactic noise over semantic signal.

We've allowed a system of self-reinforcing and ratcheting filters to evolve that effectively *fuzzes* our contribution to the growth of human knowledge (https://t.co/VmW15pGt7J), because it selects for properties only loosely related to those we claim to want. Let that sink in.

This is literally the opposite of what a filter is supposed to do: extract signal from noise, syntactic compression that preserves semantic content. Instead we are awash in syntactic artifacts optimised for minimal criticisable content and maximal pedantic posturing.
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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
So, here’s a way of reframing this question: which societies enabled coexistence and collaboration between people with divergent social styles, rather than imposing a dominant social style? Such social pluralism is very important indeed.


I suspect that the vast majority of the answers to the original question will fall foul of the tendency to project ideal social arrangements that reflect our own style of social understanding and engagement, and that this will lead them to talk past one another.

Consider the perspective of someone far away from you on in the neurological map, who doesn’t overlap with your socially calibrated genetic resources for social intelligence: the social heaven of an autist introvert may be the social hell of a bipolar extrovert, and vice versa.

I’ve had many good conversations about this with people in different parts of the map who overlap with me in different ways (h/t @tjohnlinward, @dynamic_proxy, @maradydd, @mojozozoe, @UnclePhobic) whose personal heavens I would like to visit, but maybe not live in full time.

We get to see glimpses of these heavens not merely in the past, but in the present, and abstract their geometries, both in spatial/architectural terms (https://t.co/aTcRgtJOVJ) and in temporal/dynamic terms (). The physical/computational platforms around us configure our agency.
SOCIETY
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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
I think one way of looking at the economic pathologies of our society, without using words like 'capitalism' and 'rentiership', is to talk about inequities in the distribution of risk. Some have more taste for risk than others, sure, but risk is not distributed on this basis.

In the UK, so much of our political troubles come from the growth in the landlord class, who if nothing else, wield disproportionate power relative to their social worth: at one and the same time claim to be martyrs to the risk of investment, and demand these risks be minimised.

Of course, it's possible to make claims like this: e.g., nurses have every right to claim that they shoulder not merely more risk than most, but far more risk than is strictly necessary. The pandemic has made this brutally obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

However one chooses to tally up compensation for this social role, be it financial, social, or some other privilege, it's pretty obvious that every last 'essential worker' is shouldering more societal risk than most non-essential workers compensated far better than they.

The way this trade off gets (implicitly) articulated as 'pay vs. purpose' is one of the enduring insights of @davidgraeber's Bullshit Jobs. Yet there are many essential workers who don't even get the illusion of purpose in compensation for personal risk (e.g., warehouse staff).
ECONOMY
pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
My morning thought. I think what's most incompatible about the way I think and the journal article format as a means of capturing and validating thought is that I have a completely different sense of the relation between tentativeness, rigor, and informatic compression.

The characteristic Pete thought is: wait a minute, this whole area is dominated by an assumption that no one seems to be questioning, and I've got two options to express that: i) outline the logic of the issue in a quick and compressed way, ii) write a small book with references.

The discipline seems to want something in between these poles every single time, and this makes me extremely anxious because I feel (with good reason) like any partially referential engagement with the issue will get instantly torpedoed by anyone outside its referential remit.

To repeat something I've said before: I'm actually quite good at being *concise*, I just find it very hard to be *brief*, because most of the thoughts I have don't permit brevity. Consider what your (referential) reactions are to this brief piece:

One of the main genres of publication I've actually excelled in over the years is dictionary articles, which I take a lot of joy in writing, and include some of the pieces of which I'm most proud. Consider this one on the crux of Meillassoux's project:
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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.
ECONOMY

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John Cutler
John Cutler
@johncutlefish
"The engineers on my team just want to code. They don't want to have anything to do with product. They just want specs. What do I do?"

1/n Are you asking them do to X *and* do their "day job" as defined by their managers (and frankly your roadmap) ?

If so, start there...

2/n Do they have a reason to believe that doing X will in any way improve the quality of the product and make their lives easier? Have they ever seen X "work" ?

Show don't tell.

3/n Is there average day/week a quagmire of unnecessary meetings, wading through tech debt, struggling to get *anything* to work ... and jumping through process hoops to prove their worth?

If so...no they will not have bandwidth.

4/n How do incentives work on the engineering team? Maybe they want to help, but their "grade" is determined by something altogether different.

"I'd love to, but I am on the hook to deliver [some project] this quarter to make a good impression..."

Talk to eng management.

5/n Have they had any time to practice?

Or did they get thrown into the deep end the first time they were given a shot ... expected to brainstorm on demand, be as vocal as practiced PdMs and designers, and "participate" !

Make it safe to practice. Reasonable expectations.
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IAM...BROWNING
IAM...BROWNING
@VVission123
You wanna know the real reason WHY the "Old Guard" (Evil Powers that once ruled this world) wanted all of you dumbed down?
Your brains are supposed to work like mine does. You All are supposed to be able to see into the future etc. They poison all of you with foods that keep

you asleep.
Certain Daily products that all of you use like toothpaste,Deodorant,soaps etc do harm to you without you even knowing that harm is being done. Those who don't know these things are just so used to being the way they are and think it's all "Normal" when it's really

not. Your minds are designed for so much more and they know/knew this. THEY want all of you dumbed to so you just fall in line to what they say. They want you to follow all the latest Trends, They want you to follow the "Stars". Most of the stars advertise products but I

guarantee you that they themselves don't use 90% of what they are advertising on the market today.
They are being used as puppets, thinking all of you will just follow them blindly falling into all the traps they have had set out for you ALL THESE YEARS..

Look at Portland for

example, They are legalizing all recreational drugs. Allowing Young adults who's brains aren't fully developed to just poison themselves. What happens in 5-10-15 years from now? Our entire youth is poisoned more than they already are? All our adults that the children look up too
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YogiQBKrakenElect
YogiQBKrakenElect
@YogiQ16
OMG ya'll, I have major decode! Stick with me this is going to be good!
@martingeddes shared this pic earlier showing that according to the Lunar Calendar today is actually 11.3!
@PepeNewsNow
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@ValiantThor12
@VincentCrypt46
@DanScavino
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs; Strength in numbers; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/esjoT3u5Gr

#Pluralistic

1/


On Feb 22, I'm delivering a keynote address for the NISO Plus conference, "The day of the comet: what trustbusting means for digital manipulation."

https://t.co/Z84xicXhGg

2/


Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs: Ink-stained wretches of the world, unite!

https://t.co/k5ASdVUrC2

3/


Strength in numbers: The crisis in accounting.

https://t.co/DjfAfHWpNN

4/


#15yrsago Bad Samaritan family won’t return found expensive camera https://t.co/Rn9E5R1gtV

#10yrsago What does Libyan revolution mean for https://t.co/Jz28qHVhrV? https://t.co/dN1e4MxU4r

5/
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Elbridge Colby
Elbridge Colby
@ElbridgeColby
There is some valuable analysis in this report, but on the defense front this report is deeply flawed. There are other sections of value in report but, candidly, I don't think it helps us think through critical question of Taiwan defense issues in clear & well-grounded way. 1/


Normally as it might seem churlish to be so critical, but @cfr is so high-profile & the co-authors so distinguished I think it’s key to be clear. If not, people - including in Beijing - could get the wrong idea & this report could do real harm if influential on defense issues. 2/

BLUF: The defense discussion in this report does not engage at the depth needed to add to this critical debate. Accordingly conclusions in report are ill-founded - & in key parts harmful/misleading, esp that US shldnt be prepared defend Taiwan directly (alongside own efforts). 3/

The root of the problem is that report doesn't engage w the real debate on TWN defense issues or, frankly, the facts as knowable in public. Perhaps the most direct proof of this: The citations. There is nothing in the citations to @DeptofDefense China Military Power Report...4/

Nor to vast majority of leading informed sources on this like Ochmanek, the @RANDCorporation Scorecard, @CNAS, etc. This is esp salient b/c co-authors by their own admission have v little insight into contemporary military issues. & both last served in govt in Bush 43. 5/
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Noah Smith
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@Noahpinion
1/People I know on the Right tend to be obsessed with the idea of "crimethink", taboos, and the (supposedly) oppressive, omnipresent enforcement of liberal cultural norms.

Why?

My new theory: A lot of it is guilt.

2/It's true that in some circles - the media, universities, many big corporations - liberal norms *are* enforced to some degree, and the enforcement has probably gotten stronger in recent years.

But I don't think this explains all of the Right's obsession.

3/The stereotype is that people on the Right tend to be more threat-sensitive. That would help explain the perception that liberal norm-enforcers are lurking everywhere, ready to pounce and anathematize anyone who makes a misstep.

But I don't think that's all of it either.

4/And of course, it's always fun - whether you're on the Right or the Left, or playing a video game, or whatever - to style yourself as the brave iconoclastic rebel fighting against the oppressive forces of blah blah blah.

But I don't think this is all of it, either.

5/The reason I think it's more than these things is that even *in private*, people on the Right express their "crimethink" ideas very gingerly and hesitantly.

I get the sense that they're not just afraid of external censure, but have also internalized liberal norms.
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EverythingOppresses
EverythingOppresses
@SoOppressed
The first area to focus on is diversity. This has become a dogma in the tech world, and despite the fact that tech is one of the most meritocratic industries in the world, there are constant efforts to promote diversity at the expense of fairness, merit and competency. Examples:

USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the

ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference.

Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this

Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
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Vedic Gyaan
Vedic Gyaan
@vedicgyaanindia
The chorus of this song uses the shlokas taken from Sundarkand of Ramayana.

It is a series of Sanskrit shlokas recited by Jambavant to Hanuman to remind Him of his true potential.

1. धीवर प्रसार शौर्य भरा: The brave persevering one, your bravery is taking you forward.


2. उतसारा स्थिरा घम्भीरा: The one who is leaping higher and higher, who is firm and stable and seriously determined.

3. ुग्रामा असामा शौर्या भावा: He is strong, and without an equal in the ability/mentality to fight

4. रौद्रमा नवा भीतिर्मा: His anger will cause new fears in his foes.

5.विजिटरीपुरु धीरधारा, कलोथरा शिखरा कठोरा: This is a complex expression seen only in Indic language poetry. The poet is stating that Shivudu is experiencing the intensity of climbing a tough peak, and likening

it to the feeling in a hard battle, when you see your enemy defeated, and blood flowing like a rivulet. This is classical Veera rasa.

6.कुलकु थारथिलीथा गम्भीरा, जाया विराट वीरा: His rough body itself is like a sharp weapon (because he is determined to win). Hail this complete

hero of the world.

7.विलयगागनथाला भिकारा, गरज्जद्धरा गारा: The hero is destructive in the air/sky as well (because he can leap at an enemy from a great height). He can defeat the enemy (simply) with his fearsome roar of war.
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Yoruba History - by NNP
Yoruba History - by NN...
@YorubaHistory
The Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970-1983).

aka

The Ife 6-Year Primary Project.


In 1970, as the Director of the Institute of Education of the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), later Dean Faculty of Education, Prof. Babs Fafunwa & his team embarked on one of the most groundbreaking research projects in education for Yorubaland.


The aim of the project was to test the hypothesis that the best instructional medium for good concept formation at a very tender age is the mother tongue.

This was bolstered by the observation that “of all the continents and peoples of the world, it is only in Africa…

…that formal education is offered in a language that is foreign to the child.”

So, Yoruba was to be used & tested as an exclusive medium of passing information or instructions to a set of pupils.

The project was based on the premise that:

(a). the child will benefit culturally, socially, linguistically & cognitively.

(b). the child’s command of English will be improved if he is taught English as an entirely separate subject by a specialist teacher through the 6 years.
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Dr Amanda Moehring
Dr Amanda Moehring
@FlyBehaviour
In Academia, people aren’t always supported when they need it. I want to share what @WesternU did when my husband died right after the pandemic shutdown. It should be shared with other uni’s as a model for empathy and proactive care when someone is in crisis.
1/
#AcademicChatter
SCIENCE