Future of Intelligence in the Age of Intellectual Scarcity (Session 4)

Hello and welcome to the last and fourth session of Future of Intelligence in the Age of Intellectual Scarcity. I'll give the mic to Reza. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. I'm apologizing for being absent last session. I had to cancel it. Anyway, so today we are looking at the work of Nick Land, many of which you might have read or heard about him. Honestly, I do not know where to begin. I mean, there are so many topics that can go off tangent with regard to today's theme.

But I would generally would like to basically, my apologies, my cats just, okay, let's just forget about this problem for now. So I basically, I would like to start reading a bunch of fragments from Templexity and also from another text, Circuit Reads, that he wrote for the Accelerate Volume, the volume on accelerationism. And then show that there is a kind of, that essentially land is not

like, I don't think that it can be tackled like David Rodin, Yudokoski, the singularity called on one brush a stroke, even though we didn't do that. But nevertheless, I think that land worldview, the only way to go on and criticizing it is by showing that his building blocks are faulty, not how they are put together, but just the building blocks themselves are faulty. Essentially, they are fake. So that's what I'm going to do today. And of course, you know, I can completely understand the massive influence and the, you know, what you say, seductiveness of Nick Land writings.

in the sense that, as I was mentioning, it's quite understandable why particularly young people, including myself in the 90s, were somehow convinced that, you know, these are exciting and there is something interesting, intellectually interesting, rather than just libidinally intellectually interesting about these texts. But unfortunately, as I was talking earlier before we went online, I was saying that the case is kind of like Bataille. I remember Mark Fisher when he was alive, he posted a blog post on Bataille,

showing and discussing why Bataille is actually a reactionary conservatist. rather than that kind of radical thinker that we thought he is. And of course we know that surrealist, post-structuralist, all at some point is stuck with Bataille, but then moved on. There is a reason for it. And the same thing I have noticed with Nick Land, that it's just like the more you look into the text itself, to the premises and the conclusions, you see these rifts are being opened up. I'm sorry to say this. I shouldn't say this in fact,

but to me, even though philosophy has become fundamentally a stifled discipline, thanks to academic institutionalization and market-based education but nevertheless still i would say there is a difference between philosophy doing philosophy and doing sophistry sophistry is uh everyone can do it and it just requires the skills you can develop massive amounts of skills but these skills can only get you to some place and eventually that world starts to crumble and that I would say usually I the way now that I

have been reading Lance texts after so many years his vision almost look me to look like a visions of a genius crackpot I mean there are so many of them in the history of science and also history of philosophy. I would say that for example in the history of engineering I know one, the Polish inventor Ony Maria Romski. In for example psychiatry and psychoanalysis you can call, you can name I was just talking about it, Wilhelm Reich. So you know it's Einstein saying that I have discovered a fundamentally new novel form of energy and it's called

organ, short for orgasm and electron or an elementary form. And Einstein, you know, Einstein was extremely a generous scientist, you know, he was in conversation with Jung, so many other people. And he comes to the lab and he looks at the chamber and says, oh yes, you have totally invented a new energy, but hey, wait a minute, have you done this? Have you done that? What was the initial conditions through which you constructed your chamber? And then when Reich responds to him, Einstein shows to him that this is just clearly a bad

experimentation. There is no such thing as an organ energy. So the same thing, I would say, can be related to land. It is as if we are, as if we are, on the brink of a new fundamental philosophy that breaks the chain of the academization and fossilization of thinking and human sapiens. But no, when you actually look at it, it's just a rancid form of humanism and conservatism. That's all. So before moving on and hearing the presentations, let's hear if someone has any comment, any

a kind of form of impression of Land's work, particularly with regard to the subjects that we are discussing, namely intelligence and particularly singularity and artificial general intelligence. I can say a few words, yes? Sure, sure, absolutely. So my way to understand land works through this very old criticism of positivism, of this power of fact, you know, when someone says to you, like, whatever philosophy says, where is this fact, it's positive, and buck stops there.

And this is something philosophers hate. And the usual criticism of it is that... Not me, though. you know I'm a goddamn car nap yeah go on yeah so usually they respond that this fact was chosen arbitrary right so if you say that like humans can fly it's a fact we can say that they might as well choose some other paths it's I know there is airplanes or whatever and in like one of the extreme responses to it would be to go to completely transcendental philosophy to completely like to go back to like a priori judgments and try not to concern yourself

the statements of part but I think what a lot long does is like it really weird and completely opposite thing he just he says i'm gonna use whatever positive facts there are like my my view on this thing is going to be that i'm gonna just mix and match because ultimately for him the criterion on which he judges his system or not his system but his like line of thought is not really any kind of uh logical coherency or all or that it's all encompassing or universal it's more that it's potent it's powerful in some kind of intuitive way to him so it's like libidinal exactly uh evaluation yes yes really quite so i mean uh i would say that you

know uh it is actually quite from uh there is another line that can be connected to what you you just said, have you noticed that essentially land from the very beginning is hostile to any form of authoritarianism? It's essentially being burned by academic institutionalization and European politics. And then he slowly, this hostility becomes almost a blind hatred for democracy to the point that he can even go and take side with monarchy against democracy. The same thing can be said, an analogical line can be constructed with regard to what you just said with regard

to the idea of his hatred for logic and facts as authoritarian in principle. For some reason, I did not read the whole era of Lange, but what did I want to say? I did not really interact with his political horizons too much. For me, I don't really like, from a metaphysical point of view, what is democracy? We only know my branch's response to it, right? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, Socrates' criticism of democracy is the best one. Democracy is just a process. If you really think that it's an ideal state, you're just like screwed up already to begin with.

And if we consider it as a cybernetic process? Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. So, and anyway, I think the point here is that with kind of philosophy what Land does, he does not start with, he does not try to only go to like land of a priori or to just explain some positive facts using something transcendental. No, he just, he goes through some kind of scientific thing and then immediately jumps to transcendental. Or some sort of really metaphysical Hegelian thing. And then back to it. Yes, I know. But at the same time, I think there is some kind of deep honesty about it.

The honesty of a con man who is just like we're saying, we live in a world where people pretend there is such a thing as a people. But don't you think that it's the honesty of human confusion rather than the honesty of knowledge about the state of the world? I still think Lan in this ability to jump between these two planes of thought, what he produces is not a system is not a coherent worldview, he produces a lot of raw material in which a lot of very

interesting insights. As I mentioned, ingredients, but I think that these ingredients are themselves faulty, the way that they have been concocted. I don't know, I mean, you mentioned the ingredients. I will start for example. Like for example, cybernetic objects or technical objects. I will start to make a few examples from the history of engineering today and classical physics. But yes, superb, superb. Thank you so much for the comments. Anyone, maybe Sam can say something. Sam has been very, very silent lately. or Ian, or I don't know, Colin, Alejandro,

any person, any person, please. I could say one or two things. Sure, absolutely. So I guess one thing that strikes me as valuable in what Land does is this opening up of inquiry toward the inhuman, toward the radicality of the outside with the capital O, as he calls it. Yes.

And that has to be reflected at least partially in the movement of intelligence beyond our contingent external circumstances toward a more thorough understanding of itself. Yes. But the error, it seems, that land makes is one of moving toward the outside via a merely abstract negation rather than enduring the hard work and labor of a determinate negation. one of methodically...

Right, right. And in that sense you think that it might kind of overlaps with David Roden's project of disconnection thesis, in the sense that we were talking about, like David Roden's ultimately disconnection thesis calls apart and has no clear-cut distinction with what you might call to be apophatic theology, negative theology, abstract negation. Yeah, exactly. I think in one of the essays in Fangnumina, Land talks about this criticism of Deleuze and Guattari as their position sort of changes from

Antioedipus to Thousand Plateaus. Yes, yes. Land is concerned with radically and tactically moving toward the becoming of a body without organs and he criticizes Deleuze and Qatari for rescinding the radicality of their earlier position. Yes, and I know that back in 1997, when I was talking to Nick, he blamed this on Gautry rather than Deleuze. That Gautry puts a short leash on Deleuze with regard to absolute deterioration forces.

Yes. That's interesting. I didn't know he attributed it to Guattari specifically. Yes, yes, he does. You should know that Alain doesn't like Lacan. Oh, I know that much, yeah. Yes, yes. And essentially, Guattari has fundamentally a Lacanian position, particularly in his later life. It's already evident even in ATP. Okay. Thank you. Superb. Fantastic. So let me start with actually something that Sam brought up with regard to the question of outside.

You know, so this I have seen that is a motif for my own area of work, but also land's consistent motif of an outside. Well, let me tell you that there is no such a thing as an inside and outside. and outside. I mean from a physical standpoint and if land really is pro-science as he claims to be pro-national sciences from from the natural sciences particularly from the physical standpoint there is no difference between inside and outside. So when you look into the history of science the mathematics, the mathematics of nature initiated by Galileo moved toward, you know,

derivation of equations of motions, then to Newton, which is somehow the pinnacle of the story in this early copernican phase in which newton fundamentally abolishes the difference between the sky above and the islam beneath which is called the earth you know essentially earth is reconfigured as what you might call to be a spaceship earth it is just drifting endlessly it is no longer moored. You know, that's the story of dynamics. And I really recommend you to read

Julian Barber's history of dynamics, you know, to just get like the funny little details about this whole education from the geocentric point of view, which is, which is, by the way, the equivalent of the egocentric point of view of the humans to an alienated a completely alienated uprooted view but in 20th century something even more radical happens this is something that Poincare had already predicted that using new forms of geometrization

can allow us to have new phenomenological encounters with the world you know this is also wassail's prediction in earlier or so before before writing the crisis of modern european sciences. So around, Valentin maybe can correct me, but if I'm not wrong, around 1930s or 19, something like that, Henri Carton invents a new fundamental geometry. It's called Cartonian geometry. The Cartonian geometry revolves

around a central concept. Let me just I think this is the spelling Henri Cartan Cartanian geometry. So the whole this whole geometry form of geometrization geometrization revolves around one of the most canonical, central topics of physics. Essentially, so in physics, when we observe, we require, and this observer is, of course, physically idealized. This observer is defined by a frame of reference. So for example, Ptolemaic

frame of reference is geocentric. It is essentially what you might call to be anchored, stable, fixed. And then precisely because of this frame of reference, you see the stars in the heaven above. You think that the stars are above, OK? As if Earth is not really moving, so on and so forth. So the evolution of the frame of reference, which is a fundamentally geometrical problem, could impact mathematical physics quite greatly. So Henri Carton invented a new frame of reference.

He provided geometrization for the systematization of a new frame of reference, known as mobile frame of reference. I have forgotten the French name for it. So the mobile frame of reference is exactly like the Husserlian phenomenological transcendental ego. In the sense that it is like a raft. So you see, the old frame of reference is a stable, fixed, anchored, like a ship with its anchors into the ocean. Whereas this one looks like a raft. So it changes its direction, namely its perspectives.

You know, a frame of reference, obviously, very important for the perspective of the observation. So it changes its perspective to the point that it can allow for the construction of certain phenomenological encounters with the world in which the distinction between inside and outside has been completely abolished, like the consummation of new tones, abolishment of the sky above and the slum beneath. You can see, for example, in geometry, these kinds of abstractions, geometrical abstractions of this confounding

between inside and outside, in so-called non-trivial fiber bundles. Klein bottle is a good example of it. Or I don't know, Mobius Band, Maurice Escher's paintings, so on and so forth. So you see, this has already been done, completed, and in its entirety in mathematical physics, this abolishment of the inside and outside. But from the perspective, so it appears that, so then land cannot have a claim as if we are still beholden

to some source of, I don't know, distinction between inside and outside if it is pro-science. In the realm of science, this question has been resolved. So the only question that now remains is from a psychological point of view, or more accurately, from a psychologistic point of view, that for us humans, there appears to be something outside. But as you said, this can in fact be shown that looking into the evolution of the human history and the evolution of the conceptual history from which sapiens are made, this distinction is also wrong.

There is no outside, there is no inside. It's essentially that only a raft, like almost a neuron's raft that is being built on an open ocean plank by plank as it drifts onwards. So who was supposed to make a presentation today? I, sorry, my memory is like dementia now. I prepared some comments on. Some people were supposed to say something, presentation. I prepared some comments.

Can you remember? I prepared some comments. Can you hear me? Don't tell me that you didn't write their names. Can you hear me? Can you hear him? Yes. He has a presentation. Who has a presentation? Colin. Oh, Colin. Colin. Superb. Fantastic. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's exactly a presentation, but I did do the reading and a little bit of reflection on complexity. I can't hear him for some reason.

Can you guys hear him? I can hear him. I can hear him. I can hear Colin. Well, for some reason, I can't hear anything other than you, Valentin, Sam. huh what do you think it is um i gotta try something okay okay there was colin should be audible now okay Can I hear my apologies Colin can you repeat now yeah absolutely yeah I prepared

some sort of informal comment I don't have a big formal presentation but I think it's enough ground stress to sort of at least have a conversation and give us a little bit maybe I should log out and log in maybe that can help yes okay One second. Okay. And Alejandro, can you mute yourself or unmute yourself? Because it's kind of strange. It tells me that you are unmuted, but the sign next to your picture tells me that you are muted, which is a bit particular. Okay. let's see if we can hear colin now can you hear me uh can you hear me now reza still

no sound whatsoever still no sound so strange okay i'll try because i could hear sam i could hear you valentin can you hear me yes i can hear you now yes you can hear me now this is not colin and listen to that. Oh, okay. Oh, okay, okay, okay. So it's really just Colin. Colin, could you please log out and- Okay, don't worry. Yes, I'll do that. And- Maybe we just hold on the presentations and just dig into the materials, and then at the end we do the presentations.

How about that, Patrick? I think that would be good. And please, all of you, check if you are really locked in with your new center account. There might be a... Patrick? Yes? Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Oh, my God. It's really strange. Really strange. Hello? Hello? JOHN MUELLER, my mic should be activated and audible. And Google tells me that I'm generating sound that goes into the mic. JOHN MUELLER, No, I can't even hear you. JOHN MUELLER, Patrick. I can hear someone, but I can't hear Patrick now.

Hmm. JOHN MUELLER, That's strange. JOHN MUELLER, Can someone talk? Hello, Rezala. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear someone. Is it Edward? It's Colin. It should have been Valentin, Valentin to speak to you right now. OK, so I'm back here. I don't know if you can hear me now, Reza. Hello? Hello? Did you hear Colin just in? No, I didn't. I didn't. OK. Something is definitely wrong here. I don't know what it is, really.

It's strange. But from my end, the big problem is Google Cooked. Now I can hear you, Patrick. I can now hear you. You can't hear me. I can hear you. You can? Yes or no? Yes, I can. I can. Maybe it works now. Can you hear me now, Reza? Yes. Yes. Yes. Thanks, guys. All right. Great. Yeah, now that we've sort of reinitialized that, I was mentioning to the class that I have somewhat of an informal commentary.

Your video camera so we can see your face because currently you can only see your glasses. You all need to mute my video? No, no, no. Just tilt your screen. You mean something like that, you know? Sure, sure, sure. Thanks, I got it. Is that better? Yes. Okay, great. Yeah, so I was just mentioning that I have some sort of informal grounds for discourse rather than a big formal presentation. But so, yeah, I did, I wrote a little bit of reflection on the Templexity essay and and thought it was rather interesting because I'm formally trained as a composer.

And so I think a lot about time as material and spend a lot of time thinking about temporality. so I think Land's cosmology of time is rather interesting how it's sort of a process of teleological self-actualization and the way he sort of conceives of it as an autoproductive negantropic recursive process that sort of collapses in upon itself um and so i've read some of his comments on uh on bitcoin uh his most recent comments on on

bitcoin as somewhat of a time machine earlier this year um in addition to uh this essay on complexity and uh i've done a bit of writing on on time myself um so uh i think uh the thing that that's interesting to me about the templaxity essay is uh um how he he talks about uh shanghai specifically or cities as as time machines and i think um uh the way that he describes uh them sort of as a an emergent supra organism that metabolizes a subset of human activity to generate novelty as some sort of economic unit. And the way that he pairs these

concepts is interesting to me. I think he's grasping at sort of pairing some things that I think he wants to prove and doesn't really make the connection. But I recently read this this book by Yokui, where he says that recursion is the movement that tirelessly integrates contingency into its functioning to realize it's telos. And, and I think this is probably better articulates what land is perhaps going for than, than what, than what land describes in, in the template city essay.

time. For me, I think about how exactly does this alter time, like mechanical time specifically. So you have atomic clocks that sit in San Francisco or Shanghai or in the middle of Sahara where there's no novelty being generated from this economic standpoint at least and they don't they don't these spaces don't have exceptions to the law of thermodynamics and I think that some of the arguments that he's making are based off of some presuppositions that are relatively

falsifiable um like like like you were saying of the course um um i don't think that um you can supersede the laws of thermodynamics even even with when you start to have complex processes of feedback. And I mean, perhaps we haven't been able to observe these types of energy dynamics near event horizons and things like that, but where the dense production of energy is sort of outside of our measurement

or knowledge of how these types of systems work. But yeah, as far as I can tell, these types of dynamics that he's describing are somewhat transcendent and are not true. And I think that largely has to do with his conflation of time and productivity as some sort of auto-poetic system that can become a reality. Right, right. Superb. Fantastic. Excellent. I have a huge amount of comments, which I actually reserved to talk about, but I can just simply say them in response to your comment.

One second. Let me get a little bit of soda for myself so I can weaponize myself. OK. Thank you.

So, yes. Essentially, those of you who have followed Nick's work since when he wrote Thirst for annihilation there is a chapter on Ludwig Boltzmann now this is of course Boltzmann is famous for inventing the formula for discovering the formula for entropic dissipation essentially irreversible processes the problem is

is so simple or maybe not so simple. Well, it is simple on the first, as an appearance, but it's actually not, as Boltzmann later in his life, after he invented, discovered this formula, found out. So the problem starts with like this. So you see, the idea that time moves from past to future has no physical ground literally this is just a phenomenal logical time it can even be said that can be a phenomenalistic even worse phenomenalistic time rather than phenomenological and mostly actually one

of my philosophy friends Adam Burke discusses about this in his book the question of time, a comparative study between Boltzmann, Mach, and Husserl. It can be said that this time arrow that unfolds from the past to the future, in which time appears as a flux, like a Heraclitian form of becoming, a Heraclitian river, is merely a phenomenalistic illusion. Okay, a phenomenalistic illusion. Literally, it has no physical basis because according to the laws of mechanics, as the undergirding microscopic laws of physics, everything can be said to be reversible.

So, when you read Templexity, you see that land invokes two concepts, one the laws of conservation and the other one also temporality or a time arrow under the rubric of Boltzmann entropy principle in the sense that can be said that the laws of conservations which are reversible from mechanical microscopic point of view can be bridged or commensurated with the phenomenal time arrow that we have and through which we see irreversible processes.

For example, when we open a bottle of gas, the gas escapes and never returns back into the bottle. Okay? So this is an instance of an irreversible process. shows and the irreversible process goes along from our observable macro not micro macro physical macro physical phenomenological or phenomenalistic perspective now the thing of course this is not scientific so essentially from the time of Maxwell to Gibbs to Boltzmann and later you know now in 21st century

yours off Nick my a female only Schenker this has been actually shown to be completely fundamentally paradoxical. Essentially, it doesn't have any sort of, what you might call to be, scientific corroboration. Boltzmann also understood this. I mean, there are actually legends that the reason that Boltzmann killed himself was precisely because of this, because he noticed there is absolutely no way that he can commensurate the reversible

microphysical laws of physics with the macro physical irreversible laws of phenomenalistic temporality the arrow of time as we perceive it so the story goes like this a very very brief very quick first Boltzmann works on works of Maxwell and Gibbs and he you know he does you know it creates actually a fantastic system so you have a micro physical level a micro physical scale and then you have a micro physical scale at this lower level everything is reversible namely time arrow can go backward and forward whereas on the from on the macro physical level or the macroscopic level

everything is irreversible essentially when we look at when you open a bottle of soda the gas escapes and that never comes back into the bottle so that's the arrow of temporality which is an index of irreversible processes at the micro physical level now the thing is that obviously the phenomenalistic level or the microscopic level should always be explained by the micro physical laws which support it otherwise it would be just phenomenalistic stuff you can you can you can like uh imagine like kent's transcendental aesthetic you can even imagine about other kinds

of uh creatures and extraterrestrial uh creatures who who see that actually the gas comes back to the bottom because they have a different time perception okay so obviously you have to corroborate the upper level by the lower level the macroscopic by the microscopic Macrophysical by the microphysical, irreversible by the reversible laws of mechanics. Now, to do that, Boltzmann creates a novel solution. He creates a bridge between these two levels,

a bridge in which can be shown whatever happens among the particles, even unobserved particles like fictional particles at the microphysical, microscopic level, will lead to the phenomenal perspective of time and entropy that we have observed, such as gas escaping a bottle and never returns to it. This bridge is called the mu space, short for molecular space okay it is the molecular space or the mu space mu in a greek lettering mu space is essentially a statistical distribution it's it's one of the

earliest forms of computational dynamics or information theoretic understanding of how a system behaves. So you have, first you start to say that okay whatever, so first you draw something like a grid on your micro physical particles of gas which are unobserved and you say that there are arbitrary numbers of particles in these grid cells and each of these particles are having certain kinds of characteristics such as certain amount of momentum velocity energy so on so forth okay and then you create the mu space

which is a statistical calculation that allows you to study and display or show whatever happens at the reversible laws of mechanics will ultimately make the same results of what we have observed at the level of our temporal particular temporal perspective that a gas escapes from past to future entropy increases from past to future uh at the beginning of the universe the entropy is low and as universe expands entropy increases at the macroscopic level which is equivalent to saying

that at the micro physical level universe reaches equilibrium namely heat death Now, so Boltzmann manages to do this. That is exactly the formula that is etched on his tombstone, as Nick says it in Templexity. But the thing is that the very moment that he actually publishes this essay one of his most observant colleagues one of the greatest scientists of 19th century joseph loshenit let me give you the spelling i don't think that um i have read some of his work in farsi but i don't know whether you can

find them in english maybe in uh in german uh those of you who speak german okay this cop is now and in physics which is one of the most troublesome problems that still haven't been solved it's called lotion with products or so-called molecular innocence mu innocence like a mu space molecular space mu innocence molecular innocence it is based on this

idea that's so when we so we have these two level views microphysical in which time moves from the past to the future and then at the bottom we have irreversible loss time can go in either direction okay essentially all processes can be said to be reversible the thing so when you look at the micro physical system namely a system of particles of gas the way that you are going to build this grid so that statistically computes how they behave over time is based on a fundamental idea

it is considered in complexity science the discernment or singling out the initial and boundary conditions of your system essentially initial and boundary conditions of the particles of your gas. Okay? Now, the way that this system is being reticulated or gridded into these cells so such that you can show that whatever happens, whatever arbitrary number of particles behave in the cells, lead to something that we actually phenomenally see, namely irreversible processes, namely the temporal arrow from past future is based on this idea that at the micro physical

level at the micro physical level the initial condition of the system have been axiomatized on a principle which is not justified. This principle, as I mentioned, is called, well, in Boltzmann it's called molecular collision or molecular chaos. But Joseph Loshamit calls it molecular innocence, namely an unjustified intuition, innocence in the the sense of an unjustified intuition. So what is it exactly? It is this very idea that two particles that have not yet

collided, if they collide, their velocity can be correlated. And hence, we can statistically calculate how they evolve over time. Their velocity evolves over time. hence corroborate what we have seen at the level of the phenomenal perspective of ourselves, of our egos. The thing is that Joseph Lochemit says that this observation, this axiomatization, this assumption, has no place whatsoever at the level of microphysics,

because wasn't it the case that at the level of microphysics everything was supposed to be reversible rather than irreversible? Whether that now this whole assumption that two particles can only be correlated, their velocities can only be correlated after they impact one another is actually an irreversible assumption. essentially smuggled from the top to the bottom. But at the bottom, such an assumption has no place because everything is irreversible. It is reversible. The time arrow can go back and forth. So there is no reason to expect

that just because two particles have not yet collided, their velocities are uncorrelated. Now, this fundamentally puts a massive hole in the history of physics, a hole that hasn't been patched yet. And essentially it cannot be patched. The hole is that there is no connection between a statistical entropy and observable entropy. Observable entropy is the one that corroborates the idea that time moves from past to the future. and such and such processes can be said to be irreversible dynamics. So this is a physical historical lesson.

And there are so many of these, when you read Land's texts, that you notice that simply it is as if, as I mentioned, it's just like Wilhelm Reich, It's as if someone who doesn't really understand the history of science tries to, from basically, I don't know, entropy for dummies, create these magnificent scenarios. but even god damn Boltzmann couldn't bridge statistical entropy with observable entropy such that it can say that time arrow is actually real time arrow

is not real time arrow is still in physics considered to be a useful metaphysical fiction a useful metaphysical fiction nothing more nothing more questions and also by the way here you get another kind of paradox here with regard to the molecular innocence the idea okay so you have read temple xity He's talking about looper in the sense that your coins, your coin gold gets doubled when

you shuttle back and forth between past and future in this kind of cybernetic positive feedback. Now, here a problem arises. This problem is completely based on the phenomenal perspective. But if you go, in fact, into the microphysical laws, there is no guarantee, there is no guarantee that when your two gold coins, namely particles, collide with one another, can both of them or either of them can actually survive the collision. That is one of the most insightful principles of non-classical collision mechanics.

And so there are all of this stuff. essentially land tries to peddle something which is quite actually humanistic, namely phenomenalistic, not even phenomenological, phenomenalistic, in a sense of illusory phenomena, as Kant would have said it, to peddle it in order to derive something that is sublime, that is inhuman. okay questions questions pedaling some stones and pebbles

Edward, Herman, Alejandro. Well, I can't hear you, Edward, again, for some reason. My God, this is just annoying. Sorry, something probably for my end. Yes. Yes, I can hear. I can hear Patrick. I can't hear him neither. He is... I'm just hearing some random noises from somebody in the class. So, Edward, would you be able to ask your question on the sidebar instead?

That would come, come, come, everyone. Would you be... say something? Oriane? Sure. Sure. So if I understood correctly, there is this kind of a metaphysical assumption that infiltrates itself into this microscopical conceptual framework. And OK, so there's this anomaly that cannot be explained. So why not change the conceptual framework? So why not change how we think about the microscopic level? Would that be like a start? did i make myself yeah nick land doesn't want to do that essentially precisely because if you see his stuff about uh in in templexity he believes in the statistical uh you know uh

change in in terms of the cybernetic positive loop essentially the change of the framework is possible and essentially scientists exactly trying to do that but that requires more than a statistical automation of theories it requires a fundamental development in concepts and a structure of scientific theories something that cannot be achieved i'm not saying that cannot be achieved only by humans i am saying that it cannot be achieved by mere automation if concepts could be automated

we were already in the heavens but concept cannot be automated precisely because there are different levels of concepts The majority of scientific concepts, as I mentioned to you, particularly the ones that are relevant to what you call change of framework, require invention of new fictions about what is called in science unobservable entities, counterfactuals, modals, so on and so forth. but of course Land doesn't want to have anything to do with these kinds of stuff to him they look like some sort of human bullshit if he was

keen to actually understand what hypothesization abductive reasoning invention of new unobservables require then surely I would have said that okay essentially the difference between us is not fundamental it's just that you are like you go with this kind of method I go with that kind of method let's see who basically who's let lineage basically discover this new framework first but it just doesn't want to have those kinds of stuff essentially he sees epistemology maybe the science of knowledge generation as an artifact of human conservatism.

But to forfeit epistemology, he relapses back into the worst kinds of rancid humanism. Thanks, Reza. Absolutely. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, this is Alejandro. Yeah, his work kind of reminds me of Borges, where it's like a literary fictionalization with philosophical concepts kind of draped around. Yes, yes.

although I would say Borges is more modest than land. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, actually, this story in particular, A New Refutation of Time, I don't know if you guys have read this. No, no, no, I haven't. He argues that the negations of idealism can be extended to time. and he basically says that like as George Berkeley denies there's an object that exists independently of our perception of it and David Hume denies there's a subject apart from like a recollection of sensations. So Borges says that...

Sorry, is somebody talking? Because I can't hear anybody. neither can Sam or I can actually for some reason can hear Alejandro oh my god this is really he never have these problems except when we talk about AI my message was only meant for Reza go on Alejandro I can hear you I will go on So basically he says that if man is reduced to a collection of sensations, then a single repeated perception in a man's life or in the experience of two different men will prove that time is a fallacy since this repetition will destroy its linear sequence.

Yes, yes, yes. And it's kind of a fun little... Just a classical conclusion of the problem of induction as put forward by Hume. Yes. Go on. Yeah. Anyway, I've read a lot of Borges. I'm a big fan. Now I can't hear anyone. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Find it. But I think you cut off Alejandro. That's okay. According to my list, he is audible. It's very peculiar. Hello. Am I on?

Okay, I can hear you. I can hear you. Go on. Go on. So anyway, there's another book that's quite obscure that Borges has a review of that I'm going to find and share with the class because it's a really fascinating kind of classical take on this idea as well. Anyway, that's pretty much all I got. Absolutely. Please do that. So yes, I mean, one of the things that is very particular about land is this valorization of the Heraclitian flux or time or becoming, which is, as I mentioned to you,

it is merely a phenomenalistic perspective. I mean, Boltzmann tried to show that it is real from an aesthetical method, which is an objective method of science, but he couldn't manage to do it. He couldn't manage to do it. simply as that I mean Joseph Lochemitt's critique is first Poincare's recurrence critique and then Joseph Lochemitt's critique of the new innocence were devastating to the whole Boltzmannian enterprise I mean Boltzmann was a genius I mean his name is only second to Einstein I would say but the whole point is that the idea that time is real is quite vague. What do you mean by time? I mean

Kant understood this question. I don't think that Land understands this question as well. is real in the sense of phenomenal or phenomenologic temporality of experience. Experience, which means that is always tethered to an agent, an aperceptive agent, an aperceptive agent. But time is not real from a physical standpoint. I mean time, yes physics talks about time, but what they mean by time is not the goddamn temporal arrow that land talks about. It's essentially a spatial

metricization, a spatial metrics. To corroborate, to commensurate between the two is a massive task and it looks like that land pedals the former with the assumption as if there has been already a commensuration has happened, you know, essentially, this is what I would say, that's essentially the sign of what you might call to be a fraud scientist. To conclude such and such consequences. But if we really were

honest about the statistical method and natural sciences, insofar as if you have read circuitries, It just doesn't understand a difference between technical object and a natural object. So if a technical object can be said, or an economic object like currency, can be taken as natural object, then we should treat it as natural object. And to treat it as a natural object, we should go back to the microphysical laws of physics. namely what we have at our disposal right now one of the most devastating tools non-collision or sorry non-classical collision mechanics

in the sense that so he's talking about this looper movie in which the gold is getting double tripled so on so forth as you move back, shuttle back between the past time and the future time. As I mentioned, in the non-classical scenario of mechanics, essentially there is no guarantee that you can even have one gold in your vault once this travel takes happens. Because there is essentially that time travel, the only way that this can only happen, the way that

Nix talks about it, is by way of this temporal phenomenal perspective of the arrow of time, which is now reversed and becomes a loop and becomes a nonlinear and becomes a spiral and and creates more and more and more generation of gold and what you might call to be profits, namely capitalism. Reza, I think I should be a little bit generous to Nick. He repeats multiple times that he treats the whole thing as an allegory. For him, time travel is a metaphor. Allegories are always dangerous. and what he's talking about is not the physicality of time trail

I mean he treats as always he treats the whole physics the whole cybernetics he always treats it as a metaphor for transcendental stuff and the way he does it he's not talking about some kind of aprior ontological truth he's talking about I don't think that he treats it as mere a metaphor. I think the movement for him is a technical innovation that once and for all abolishes the distinction between natural object and technical object. This is absolutely true. This is essentially, if you read circuitries, he actually talks about this at the very beginning.

He talks about Norbert Weiner's cybernetics and he shows that Norbert Weiner, which is of course, this is Simon Donne, critique of Norbert Weiner, tries to abolish the difference between a technical object and a natural object. essentially in the sense that cybernetics becomes the real itself. And then he accuses Norbert Weiner of moralism precisely because Norbert Weiner, and he quotes Norbert Weiner, he says that we should be careful when we are using cybernetics. No, Nick, I don't think that Nick treats this as a metaphor by any means. Because if it was a mere metaphor, we would be fine with it. I would be fine with it. I mean, who cares about metaphors?

All metaphors are useful. He doesn't treat it as a metaphor. I think he's just more serious about the role of metaphor, because there is this thesis, and I'm not sure if it was explicit in Malik's article, or I just remember because of Esposito, who was a pupil of Umberto Eco, right? and the thesis about how that the most important scientific understanding of the world is a guiding metaphor of all kinds of art, cultural production, whatsoever. And when he talks about, when he tries to consider like how physics, how physical,

how physics or like contemporary science kind of use the world, he's looking for the way we start to understand world in a new way using the same matrix. And when he talks about desire and how desire works in time, this is how I read this book, about how desire works in temporality, how it's like. Yeah. And this is, it would be, I don't think it's, regardless of how he tries to market his work, I think it's definitely ridiculous to consider this on such a low level as like exact physical

understanding of the world. But it's very productive. And there is no unique after almost 18 years. I know that he's exactly thinking about it in the sense that he's actually bringing out the laws of Hamiltonian mechanics in order to prove his work. Can you believe it? The metaphoric aspect is absolutely fantastic. And he's making cultural contribution from a metaphoric aspect. If that was the case, I would be like, Saint, land, please save us.

But it is not really that. It is really not that. He actually believes that everything that he says is undergirded by natural physical sciences. Even if he believes that, I think there are two things to note. First of all, even if he himself believes that, we should treat him as a poet and interpret what he should talk about. I have no problem with that. And he's a great poet of our time. Yes, no, I actually defend Nick against those people who call him a fascist, as poets of our time, like Aldrin, like, or Wagner.

You know, Wagner music was appropriated by Nazis, so what? You know, that doesn't make Wagner a Nazi. But also, I mean, at some level, I think we are already quite beyond physics that is intuitively understandable just like that. Absolutely. I mean, physics is essentially the organ of anti-intuition at this point. So when he tries, I mean, maybe one of the ways he can hope to contribute to science is not by providing a good scientific fact, but rather than by trying to reinterpret the

real world in physical terms to find a better metaphor for scientific things. Yes. However, you see two points here. One, the use of metaphors is absolutely one of the greatest tools in the scientific method. But metaphors are always contextual. You cannot overextend the bounds of a metaphor. Whereas Nick does, in fact, overextend the bounds of his metaphors, cybernetics becomes the real. to such extent that the technical object becomes the real object, becomes the real, the unconscious. Essentially, the machinic becomes the cosmological, tonotropic tendency toward final extinction.

Second, I would say that if he was constrained and restricting himself to what you just said, he would be a great great philosopher and also a great poet but it doesn't want to restrict and limit himself to this you see okay then you read dark enlightenment okay so as a perspective of an apostate Muslim in the sense that I am half atheist half mystic have whatever born as a Muslim in the Middle East I can tell you this so this is this is like

a paradox here so if you don't believe in agency then and you also believe in in the cosmic extinction for its anatropic tendency toward complete annihilation full equilibrium heat death and you think that capitalism both basically represents or signifies the process of complexification of irreversible dynamics and also the heat death of the universe, namely complete extinction, then this has already been implied by the goddamn physics.

Then why do we need to submit to capitalism? Why does it bother you that a poor little Muslim over there in the ghettos prays five times a day? And why not people are trying to make more money? You see, there are massive contradictions here. He just wants to preserve the agency of capitalism and also say that there is no such a thing as an agency. If there is an agency to capitalism, then yeah, sure, you can become an ideologue of capitalism, say that you have to do this and that in the profit of capitalism.

And in that case, means that capitalism is not in fact a final object. It's not the teleological object that you think. But if you think that capitalism is in fact a teleological object that you were thinking what it is, then why does it matter that I goddamn, you know, farm my basically backyard, pray five times a day, do this or that? Who gives a shit about it? You cannot make a political theory out of this anymore. Do you know what I'm saying? Okay. I have a question that could fit in here. It's cool.

Can you all hear me right now? Maybe Ian can say something. I just logged in on my phone from off my laptop, so I don't know if that fucks the band. Yeah, okay, I'll just ask my question. Dylan, you are... Okay, Dylan, I cannot hear you. You were talking something. I can hear the... Oh, my God. It's such a strange day. Dude, this platform is very solid. like yeah I don't like okay I can maybe I'll just type out my question if that's cool all I can see

is that uh Dallas camera type his question and yes yes maybe that would be the best course for now okay I'll do that now or maybe Patrick can actually repeat the questions for me and always I just reiterate whatever I said. Okay, yeah, that sounds good to me. So, yeah, so basically, like, in terms of agency. Okay, Ian, can you jump in, see if we can hear you? Yeah, Ian, are you there? Can you hear me? I can hear you, yeah. So we're on the same page. So I'll talk for, like, you know, 15 seconds.

I can't even hear Dan, Ian. I think the best would be if you write your comments in the group chat and I'll just repeat them from there. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Yeah, get out of my face. Okay, cool. I can't hear. Yeah, y'all can move on. I'll go ahead and type it out. Yeah, I think it's buggy. I mean, definitely it is not something from just my end. so yes so let me say a few stuff about things that I have seen other than the things that I

told you about Nick's work I mean there are massive amounts of things that can be talked about one And it's the idea that in circuitries is a piece written for accelerate volume, the acceleration is reader. Nick in multiple places claims that technical objects at this point cannot be differentiated from natural objects.

So what is the difference between a technical object and a natural object? so a natural object is already concretized okay from a in a simondonian terms whereas a technical object is in the process is in the process of concretization to say that there is no distinction between a technical object and a natural object and it's just a humanistic myth means that in fact technical object has the same absolute concretized origin that the natural object has and it can be in fact it's studied by the same

methods that science studies a natural object okay now a problem here arises i think the first problem is this myth of the absolute origin for technical objects essentially there is no such a thing as an absolute origin or a technical object now let me find my notes my apologies and do we need some sort of rest break I mean Whenever you are tired, just let me know.

You can have a five-minute break and come back. Is it a good time? I can go on with this topic. OK. OK. Sure. Sure. So essentially, Nick thinks the big picture of the evolution of technical objects. For example, think of automata. Automata in the most basic ways, like from an electronic perspective, okay, cybernetic perspective. So...

If we are thinking about this evolution of the technical object, then given the fact that Nick doesn't actually admit the distinction between a natural object and a technical object, then we should ask a fundamentally new question. What then would be the origin of technical objects? how Darwin asked what would be the origin of the goddamn species natural objects okay or natural species life forms or how Einstein Mendeleev looked into the natural objects and tried to define the origin of the natural objects well the thing is that technical objects

absolutely have no single origin, precisely because they are not natural objects. What makes you think natural objects have a single point of origin? No, single only in the sense of a dynamic principle, a dynamic principle that can generate a ramificatory path. essentially so from a quantum perspective you can think about Big Bang and you can see it by single I don't mean as an original or a fundamental bedrock I simply mean as something from which you can start ramify and see the

natural objects, the evolution of galaxies and stars, so on and so forth. Okay? Whereas technical objects don't have this, don't have this kind of beginning, precisely because technical objects are fundamentally beholden to the evolution of two things, not only natural objects or natural life forms such as Homo sapiens, but also cultural evolution and technologies of conceptualization and epistemology, science of knowledge. Let me, so we can ask a question, to what first beginning can we return in order to establish

the coming into existence of a specific technical reality. Okay? So before the penthod and the tetrod, there was deforest triode. Before deforest triode, there was a diode. You know what a diode is? It's essentially a two terminal electronic component that has asymmetrical conductivity in the sense that electricity can, electric current can go in one way and the other way

it has high resistance, meaning that it cannot go the other way. So the asymmetry of conductivity of the electric current in a diode, which is, you know, as you know, this is like basically 101 electronic engineering. Is the diode an absolute origin? Not completely. there is no doubt that thermo thermostatic emissions was then unknown at the time of the invention of the diode but the phenomena of transports of charges in a space by an electric

field had long been known electrolysis have been known for a century and ionization of of the gas for many decades. Thermonautic emission is necessary for the diode as a technical system because the diode would not be a diode if the transport of electric charges were reversible. Remember the diode is essentially an asymmetric circuit. Electricity can go in one way but when it tries to come back in the other way, reverse its current,

there is a high resistance. Okay? Such reversibility does not occur under normal conditions because one of the electrodes is hot and consequently emissive and the other cold and consequently non-emissive. What makes a diode essentially a diode, a two-way valve, is the fact that the hot electrode can be almost interchangeably, either be a cathode or anode,

while the cold electrode can only be an anode. As it cannot emit electrons, it can only attract them if it is positive, but it cannot emit them even if, in relation to another electrode, it is negative. The result of this is that external voltages are applied to the electrodes. Current will pass through because of the thermoelectronic effect if the cathode is negative in relation to the anode. But no current will pass through if the hot electrode is positive in relation to the cold electrode.

What constitutes a diode is precisely this discovery of a condition of functional symmetry and not properly speaking the transport of electric charges across the vacuum by means of an electric field. Experiments having to do with the ionization of monoatomic gases had earlier demonstrated that free electrons can move about in an electrified field but this is a reversible not a polarized or asymmetric phenomenon if the rarefied gas tube is turned around the positive pole and the luminous rings change signs in relation to

the tube but their position remains unchanged in relation to the direction of current from generator the diode is made from the association of this reversible phenomenon of transports of of electric charges through a field and from the condition of reversibility affected by the fact that transportable electric current are produced by one single kind of electric charges and only by one of the two electrodes. Essentially, the discovery or I mean sorry, the invention of a diode was not based on

what you might call to be a simple accumulation of technical objects prior to it, or automation of theorization in a Landian sense. But it was based on established theories which were available, but also hypothesization about what might actually happen when you apply this theory against reality and essentially the abductive reasoning some of the things that land utterly hates for me to mention so this is a lesson from electronic engineering you know

there is no such a thing as what you might call to be a technical reality as a foundation. Technical objects neither have origins and you can actually say the same thing about natural species in terms of a single fundamental origin, fundamental origin, like a fundamental, an essence. Neither have that kind of origin nor can we actually predict how they move forward, how they basically can be reconfigured to become concretized into new objects. Whereas

for natural objects we already see a concretized object like exactly Lance Goldcoin which he talks about at the very beginning of the 10-plexity, that it remains stable across vast time scales, assuming that there won't be some sort of thermonuclear anomaly. So with that said, this is something that...

My apologies, one second, I forgot, I'm just trying to find my notes. So having cancelled the distinction between a natural object and a technical object, Land essentially deprives himself of a science of technology.

a natural object is already concretized whereas a technical object is yet in a simondonian sense to be concretized if they are both concretized at the same level then means that we cannot have a science of evolution of the technical objects which is called techno mechanics or techno machines or whatever uh i don't know what i forgot what uh nick has a word for techno techno techno technomics or something like that essentially a science of technology you cannot have that kind of thing anymore because it's just redundant okay and in that case if that is really the case

Two consequences arise. One, the consequence that is very close to David Roden's thesis. If there is no distinction anymore between natural object and the technical object, then why does it matter we are talking about cybernetic capitalism? Why not think about about my worn shoes as a positive feedback loop with my socks, or the interstellar configuration of celestial bodies, as Copernicus thought about it. The distinction between capitalism and a natural object fundamentally fades away.

then there is no longer any sort of wager about why we should actually care about capitalism. Do we care actually about stars dying 500 billion years from us? No, we don't. Then why is it so important? Consequence one. Essentially nihilism in a rabid nihilism, in a sense kicks in and takes revenge upon Landian feeble cyberneticism. Any question? Any question?

Can you hear me? Yeah, I just, I'm curious about the, your critique of capitalism and how could it be, if it could be applied to like your idea of communism or something, whatever you believe in. To be honest with you, this is something that I am still thinking about. That's why I'm saying that I am like these kinds of what you might call to be not a closet communist, but an uncomfortable communist in the sense that I definitely think that communism should be understood as a process rather than an ideal state.

And essentially, when the moment that people try to tell me that communism is some sort of ideal state, that's when I just like, oh no, no, I don't want to hear about that. You know, that makes me also some sort of reactionary in my own camp. But nevertheless, I'm not shy away from saying that. I would, I'll refer them to basically Marx and Engels' definition of communism. Communism is not an ideal state of affairs, but a pro-, a real process by which, that which is inevitable will be revealed and exposed as evitable.

And that is the whole point. You see, just because the stars die every day doesn't mean that we have to do these kinds of stuff. Just because capitalism works this way doesn't mean that we have to abide by this, unless you actually think that capitalism is exactly like the death of a stars, precisely because technical objects which made capitalism or economic objects that made capitalism are on the same footing as the national objects. In that sense, then again, the point is void and moot. Why do I need to care? Do you really actually care or do you even conceive this,

that a star five billion years from now is dead and you are seeing its dead light? No, do you? Cogitation, as Plato would have said, cogitation is beyond life and death. It's beyond this trap of the inevitable reality and the inevitable, basically, form of mindedness. It is beyond all of these distinctions. and that this is where my version of communism is essentially not communist in a in a what you might call to be uh economic communist even though i believe that economic uh has a play as a role to play but for me communism is essentially a thesis for the mind

for what we are here and now totally so let me just uh see the some stuff on the sidebar Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, I didn't read the whole thing, but yes, absolutely. I think

that the whole idea of antipraxis, I mean, of course, to be honest with you, I have talked to many of these brilliant young new generation. I'm just getting old. I'm just, what do you call them in Twitter? Hashtags, boomers. I've become a boomer, and I have nothing against it. Essentially, everyone basically becomes, sees itself at the onset of dementia at one point or another. But the point is that, yes, so I have talked to many of them,

and actually they have told me that they don't mean by anti-praxis what actually LAN means by anti-praxis. Because if it really means anti-praxis as if like praxis is just like some sort of human security, cybernetic security system, then that is just like, from what I have already told you, that just like is a mishmash of contradictions. It just doesn't have one single ground. Why then, as I mentioned to you, why do we need to be good capitalists, like Chinese, you know, capitalist.

What cannot be like, you know, a fanatic Muslim, you know? That is a consequence of a Landian thesis. In fact, a Landian thesis does not allow you to cut a cross between democracy and fascism, between a fanatic Muslim and a Chinese capitalist, between a slave worker in a Chinese factory and someone who in America gets the profit of that labor. Until then, I really think that there is nothing to say to Lange.

It's just the whole, it's a hot wash of contradictions. And I mean, I've tried my best to talk to him, but he's just repeating the same things. I mean, as Valentin said that I try to be completely generous and I am quite respectful to him as an old friend. In a sense that I read him merely as a fantastic sci-fi writer, a metaphorist, you know, a new Robert Heinlein of our age, you know, but I cannot give him more credit than that. If he tries to pretend that he can in fact, these are based in facts, and he can drive,

derive a political conclusion out of these facts, he's so sadly mistaken. I mean, this is just like literally, give this to a student in physics and they will say that, huh, let me see, this just doesn't look right. Which I actually did, by the way. Shall I continue? Or you want to have a break? Let's have a break. Let's have five breaks. I see Valentina is yawning constantly.

Let's have a break for good sake. OK, let's have a break now. OK, OK, break. Everyone goes out. Bye bye. I have a contract message from Andrea. He wanted me to ask you to. Well, OK, OK, OK. Yes. Tell Andrea, so basically I just checked my new center email. I haven't got any email from LSE. Can you tell Andrea, because I've been basically blasted with emails for the past few days, can you send Andrea that send me an email ASAP

so I can, even if they haven't contacted me, I can send them an email from my newsletter account? Okay, definitely. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Has the world ended yet during our break? I'm looking very much forward to it.

One of the things that I was just thinking when I was pulling up my glass, I have, you know, Valentin is totally right, you know, there is a difference between accusing someone of being a fascist and which is entirely ungenerous. these kinds of labelings, any kind of label is always ungenerous. It is basically short circuits the labor of constructive criticism. But I don't, but also I have also another

kind of moral dilemma and it is very hard for me to express this. Now as someone who who has been in fact, you know, been in contact with Nick for many, many years. It's in the sense that, okay, you know, why is that? We take ourselves beholden to generosity and forgive our enemies when they fail in generosity. In the sense that just look at his Twitter accounts and I really don't but once in a

while I do, you know, because I get a link from a friend, and the stuff that he says about other people, it's just astonishingly stupid. It's, as Ray Broussier said, it's even dumber than fascism. You know, I have nothing against the idea that's about generosity. And you can be enemy and be generous. You can be rivals in philosophy and be generous, like Quine and Carnap. I have seen the same dynamic within myself and Ray Brzee.

I mean, Ray is a giant tank that politely rolls over you intellectually. And then I will also try to resist. But at the end of the day, it is all based on intellectual generosity. Whereas, where is the intellectual generosity here in Lance's case? I wonder. so this is a moral dilemma that I myself is struggling with why is that I need to be beholden to generosity while land doesn't basically hold such basically commitments he sees them as pathetic

OK, if they are pathetic, then don't accept generosity, even intellectual one. Because it is quite a moral, it's, you know, as I said, he wants to be non-human or inhuman, but also having the cake of humanity. You know, you cannot have both ways, either this or that one. Yeah, I absolutely agree. What I mean by generosity, intellectual generosity in this case, is not generosity to him as a person, not to his Twitter account. It's more like when you approach a work with a book, generosity means something very specific, I think. Generosity means that you

consider, like, instead of trying to criticize it as a whole, you try to find something good in it, like, in details. This is what I think is a generous reading. Yes, that is a good one. Yes. Actually, about his own moral stance. It's like, more or less, actually, against his moral stance, usually. Because you say, yes. Absolutely. He wants to read out to my friends that if you want to read land just read his work just don't watch his twitter account that's the best idea and yes absolutely i think from that perspective land then becomes a different person even if he is not that

kind of person but essentially the whole point of philosophy is to impersonalize philosopher essentially land thought that philosophy is personalization of philosophers but when you really look into the deep history of philosophy philosophy impersonalized philosophers it just becomes cognitive units exactly like his gold units you know traveling in time and that's when we can talk about the stuff. But one thing, isn't his Twitter account, there is like this political play around?

I don't know which one you are referring to. Outsideness, Outsideness. I always read it in a way that all the political stuff is just camouflage and then he puts out like these links like to Chinese AI and all the all that is basically him trying to say look I have facts for my claims I have facts I'm I'm basically a prophet. Right, right. To be honest with you, the first time that I actually looked at the Twitter, I mean, we are going off tangent.

I'm going back on topic. The first time that I actually looked at Nick Lenz's Twitter account, Altsinus, I thought that, oh my goodness, this is the smartest bot ever invented in the history of AI. But not a person. I'm sure that Nick would actually love this compliment, and he might use it as a blurb. I mean, maybe this amorality. Can you guys hear me? Yes, but absolutely. Generosity to your enemies is always great, but generosity in the sense that me and Valentine were talking about. When there is someone who has dubious accounts,

and overextending the conclusions as a person, as a person, and you are interacting with that person, I don't think that generosity is no longer necessary. It is an ethical injunction. It's justice. You know, you don't need it. As Seneca said that, you know, the idea of servility can come in different ways. We can be servile to ourselves or we can be servile precisely because we are empathizing too much with our enemies as persons. Now I don't want you to tell Reza that said that, oh Reza said that you have to annihilate

your enemies. No that's not what I just said. All I said is that you always have to create a balance, an ethical balance, between the work of a person and the person. Even if that person thinks that he is not a person, he doesn't have an agent to it, And it's essentially, unfortunately, bad news for Dr. Lam, he's still living in a human society. Because if his capitalist singularity had already occurred, you wouldn't get oppositions

to yourself, you know? So the bad news is that he's still living in Hegelian geistig spirit. So as I said, it would not even be right to found a separate science with regard to the science of technology of the study of regulatory and control mechanisms in automata namely cybernetic built to be automata technology ought to take as its subject the universality of technical objects

in this respect the science of cybernetics is found wanting and this is essentially it's a positive aspect of Wiener cybernetics even though it has the boundless merits of being the first inductive study of technical objects and of being a study of the middle ground between specialized sciences it has particularized its its field of investigation to too great an extent. For its part of the study of a certain number of technical objects,

cybernetic, at its starting point, accepted a classification of technical objects that operate in terms of criteria of genus and species. the science of technology must not do so there is no species of automata in terms of a universal science of technology whereas for cybernetic it is there are simply technical objects these possess a functional organization and in terms of different degrees of automatism are realized. Now so what does that mean? It simply means

that in one word this absolutization of cybernetics as the first principle which ultimately abolishes distinction between a technical object and a natural object in a landian sense is itself what you might call to be what like from analogy the science of studying the size of a skull or something like that if it is not integrated within other sciences precisely because cybernetics can only talk about

a specific species of technical objects not the genus or the generality of technical objects This essentially it is a subset rather than the constituting set of technical objects and technology in general or science of technology. There is one element that threatens to make the work of cybernetics to some degree. This is from Simon Donne, this part.

There is one, he says, there is one element that threatens to make the work of cybernetics to some degree useless as an inter-scientific study. Though this is what Norbert Weiner defines as the goal of his research. The basic postulate that living beings and self-regulated technical objects are identical, exactly like Landian position. The most that can be said, Simon Dunn continues, the most that can be said about technical objects is that they tend towards concretization.

whereas natural objects as living beings are concrete right from the beginning. There should be no confusing of a tendency toward concretization with a status of absolutely concrete existence. Though every technical object possesses to some degree aspects of residual abstraction, one cannot go, this is really important, all this in Italic, one cannot go to the extent of a speaking of technical objects as if they were natural objects.

technical objects must be studied in their evolution in order that the process of concretization as a tendency can be abstracted therefrom still the final product of the technical evolution does not have to be isolated so that it can be defined as an entirely concrete It is more concrete than what preceded it, but it is still artificial. Instead of considering one class of technical beings, automata in a cybernetic sense,

we should follow the lines of concretization throughout the temporal evolution of technical objects. This is the only approach that gives real signification, all cybernetic mythologies apart, to the bringing together of living beings and technical objects. Fantastic quote from Simone de Ville. Questions, anything? If we can hear some voices, I mean if I can hear some voices.

So, okay, I know that we have some technical issues today. Another point is the idea that, as Simon Dern implied here, He's treating technical object as if it is already fully concretized. Namely, that there is no distinction between the technical and the natural. But that already requires an assumption.

And what is this assumption? It is what land hates most. A teleotheological view like ego. Like as if he's a maximalist Hegelian. The spirit is already absolute. You see, here, essentially, it's the worst nightmare that you can tell that Dr. Land, by the way, did you hear that you are a Landian? I mean a Hegelian, a maximalist Hegelian, not just a Hegelian, a maximalist Hegelian. That would be just a total nightmare for Land. But yes, the whole idea that a technical

object has no difference with the natural life form already means that the technical object has the same amount of concretization as the natural object, which means that the technical object has already moved through its tendency to its concretization, which is the technical evolution, to full concretization, absolute concretization. and hence it can be said that there is no from now, there is no difference between a natural object and a technical object. But that is exactly the point that bad Hegelianism, bad Hegelianism, there are good Hegelianisms,

bad Hegelianism tries to make about the spirit, about the progress, the modernist progress of the humans. So you see, essentially land reinvents the myth of human modernism, transplants it into the artificial technical domain without actually rectifying what was wrong with the old humanistic view, modernist view. in tantalizing indications, but never fully. Questions?

Anyone? Someone, please. Patrick, you say something at least. I can at least hear you. If you ask me, then there's something going through my mind. Maybe it's completely crazy. But Robert Wiener wrote a book about how cybernetics and religion interject. It's the Golan book. And somehow I think that, I don't think that Land has even touched on that subject. I think he sees himself as a secularist.

But I just came up with the notion that dialectics is not a workable system for him, even though he adheres to it. He needs a third figure, something like an angel or a god or something that would need to be AI. Absolutely. To be honest with you, that's why I intentionally brought this story that, you know, that when you look at LAM's account of cybernetics, in the sense that it's finally flattened the distinction between technical and natural

as a maximalist Hegelian nightmare. I actually wanted also to add, but I just thought that it would be just Valentin told me that I shouldn't be so, you know, ungenerous to Nick. I just wanted to also say that essentially Lent, to his horror, is a Heideggerian. In fact, there is a massive connection between all of these singularity people and Heidegger. Only a god can save us. It's just that whereas Heidegger sees it in Dasein, these people see it in AGI, in singularity, in technicity, so on and so forth.

But nevertheless, it is the same old story, teleotheology of the most obnoxious bad forms of Hegelianism. I always felt like that there is a link that is never established, never built upon by land and the traditionalist school like Ebola and all the others. Because the core idea of going back and building something from the past and going past the

enlightenment really aligns well with traditionalism. I might be completely wrong on that. No, no, no, of course. And I would say that Nick doesn't have any sort of qualms against traditionalism. He actually sees traditionalism as a form of... One second, let me just turn on my iPad and I will read this quote for you. So you know essentially... So, you know that one of the first motifs in Lance Cannon is positive feedback loop in the second order cybernetic.

Okay? So positive feedback loop, there are many cyberneticians who, including, you know, no binarians, who believe that an unleashed or untethered or unconstrained positive feedback loop leads to the complete destruction of the system that produces the positive feedback loop. You see, positive feedback loop is simply what you might call a scientific metaphor, to use Valentin's idea, a scientific metaphor for Deleuzian deterritorialization without guttering.

okay so this is here here this one second okay a stabilization circuits this is from circuitries in accelerate reader, urbanomics volume. Stabilization circuits suppress mutation, whilst short-range runway circuits propagated only in an unsubstantiable burst

Before cancelling it entirely, neither of these figures approximate to self-designing processes or long-range runway circuits, namely, such as Nietzsche's will to power, Freud's phylogenetic thanatos, or pregogen dissipative structures. Now, you should hear, you know, it's just like, it's just basically a bunch of metaphors put together here at this point. Essentially, what he means is that, so, according to the law of cybernetics, positive feedback loop has certain kinds of constraints, okay?

okay, you cannot have a perpetual positive feedback loop because if we, and you know the positive feedback loop for land is essentially the principle of free market capitalism or, I don't know, Austrian school nightmare, something like that. Essentially, what he's trying to say is that so there are these goddamn stupid no reactionary cyberneticians who think like gutterie that absolute positive feedback loop is not good for the system because it collapses the system namely deterioratorialization cannot be endless it should be re-terrorized at some end

ATP thesis, okay? Now, he's actually trying to say that in fact we can have systems of long-range positive feedback loop or endless deterioration which actually function such as Nietzsche's will to power okay well yeah right okay that that makes sense Freud's phylogenetic answers okay maybe that also works and pregagent's dissipated structure i don't think that really it works from the point of complexity sciences. I don't know how he's reading Precaution but

I'm sure that he has some explanation but let's just forget about it. Then he says long-range runway processes are self-designing but only in such a way that the self is perpetuated as something redesigned okay if this is a vicious circle it is because positive cybernetics must always be described as such logic after all is from the start theology. Oh my god, I'm going to pull my hair now. And then he continues, long-range positive feedback is neither homoesthetic nor amplificatory, but escalative. Where modernist cybernetic

models of negative and positive feedback are integrated escalation is integrating or cyber emergent it is the machining convergence of uncoordinated elements a phase change from linear to nonlinear dynamics design no longer leads back towards the divine origin because once shifted into cybernetic, it ceases to commensurate with the geopolitical ideal of the plan. Planning is the creationist symptom of under-designed software circuits associated with domination, tradition, and inhibition. And of course, as I mentioned, this is another contradiction.

He's saying that it's like using word tradition in a negative way, but it doesn't have any sort of you know problem to go back to the old good monarchist days. But the thing is that this is just again you know as we talked about it is nothing more than a crazy gluing bunch of metaphors which have been overextended out of their contexts, their contexts of application. And to be honest with you, this is what Plato would have called the epitome of sophistry.

Yes, I understand that it's useful for imagination, but nevertheless, from a philosophical point of view and a scientific point of view, it's just pure sophistry. nothing more first of all there is no such a thing so he thinks that okay well let's not talk about cybernetics personal cybernetics is not like as if it is like the fundamental science physics physics is absolutely is particularly in its different branches. Cybernism is not a fundamental science, so let's not, and I'm sure that Nick would you know, talk about it, but let's, I would hire a physicist to talk to Nick

about such things, but let's talk about this. From the standpoint of information theory, which is a physical theory of information essentially it is uh uh the the tuple of information theory and time what you might say or time in in the physical sense from the standpoint of information theory

Every single instance of complexification in any physical system leads to something which is called sharp drop in the logarithmic curve. What does that mean? So, the idea that even if we don't look at these cybernetic positive feedback loop systems from a cybernetic point of view, but from a radical physical point of view, particularly an information theoretic view,

Essentially all such systems as those no reactionary cybernetists which land opposes claim you cannot have positive feedback loop in perpetuity. At some point, the system collapses because there is a fundamental law transferred from physics to information theory. It is called a statistical stability. So what is a statistical stability?

I think I have told you about this. I'm just probably repeating myself. So I'm giving you a reductive example. So I am just an amoeba, swimming in the ancient oceans and then suddenly I become human after, I don't know, more than 600 million years, something like that. The thing is that this is a process of complexification. The process of complexification has different vectors. Not all of them actually concern with complexity of the system. Some variations, some divergence from initial conditions,

some, you know, reinventions and redesigning, so on and so forth. And then ultimately you get something what you might call complex system, like our goddamn brain. So what is complexity in today's understanding of complexity science? Complexity is not about nonlinear dynamics or variation or any of such things. It is simply about the statistical stability of the current structure in the sense that imagine that I suddenly grow a hand out of my skull.

I would die tomorrow. That is just impossible. It would be a catastrophe. essentially a statistical stability is about this idea so you have for example different levels of evolutionary dynamics whether cultural socio-economic or natural and at each level you have certain amounts of constraints these are your building blocks, okay? And how they have been configured. They impose constraints on an upper level, just like the way that you make a wall, you know? If you make a wall crooked from the first place, it will be crooked as you move forward.

So, these are called entrenched constraints or entrenched dynamics in complexity sciences. Essentially, and they can be calculated according to laws of statistics or statistical analysis of a complex system, that the statistical resolution of what can be placed on top of a lower level, it is within such and such threshold, namely it is constrained by the lower level. And then more levels are basically getting more and more constraints and they go.

you know essentially if you make a bad wall it falls apart it falls down and this is the whole point cybernetics is simply a system for understanding the behavior the behavior not the inner mechanisms or the inner configuration the behaviors of specific levels of a system, rather than the whole system at multiple scales. It's just like cybernetics, you can talk about like for example the bricks at this level,

but then you cannot really extend the conclusions that you have reached and the behavior that you have observed to the other level, because the other level would behave fundamentally differently. It has different fitness criteria, so on and so forth. And this is really the very idea of complexity today. The statistical stability of the structure. Essentially, everything should respond to entrenched constraints. You cannot have some sort of runway positive feedback loop or AGI. Precisely because at some point it contradicts or conflicts with the constraints already in place.

So, land can take two positions at this point. He says that, okay, well, the system collapses. Good. Old thanatropic idea. Universe gets annihilated. Good for us. Okay, I'm fine for it. Second, he says that, well, this is an emergent phenomenon. But came young Jae-won Kim, the cognitive scientist, has actually already an answer for it. This kind of emergentism is merely epistemological rather than ontological. No causes can go backwards and change their,

no effects can go back and redesign their causes at the microphysical level. Essentially, as you make new levels of this brick wall, the upper parts cannot just go back simply and change the foundation of the wall that you have built. That is preposterous from a causal deterministic perspective. And of course, land buys into determinism. this whole point then becomes fully contradictory. You either have emergentism or determinism in the strong sense.

You cannot have both a strong determinism and a strong emergentism. Someone, something, someone, please. I have my, not reason, but like a play of Alain, which I think is, when I talk about the feedback loop, we should not, or feedback or positive feedback, negative feedback, we should not only think about it in completely practical plain. So for example, we can say

about some feedback loops in an organism or in a tool, which would help it from destruction. But at the same time, there is a bigger feedback loop where whatever specific version of a tool or organism is there it interacts with the whole world at some point and it's just I'm saying the whole world not because it actually does it but because in input that potentially it interacts the whole with the whole world and this forces it to evolve and in this in this sense we can't really have right now any kind of tool it can only have the kinds of tools which will lead to specific situation on the market, right? So we can only have specific kind of apps on our iPhone,

which would lead to some specific situation on the market, for example. If it's not good enough, it will be better, or it will just die. And the same with organism. It either can feed itself or it dies. And what is this? When we talk about the whole world, it's not a thing right it's like it's a thing in itself it's a something different it's uh when when we go through the whole world through uh to get some new idea or something else which sometimes uh people think about it as like it comes out of nowhere or something else and uh i mean when land when land when land is concerned with capitalism or with i don't know darwinian

evolution or something else he's really uh he's really interested in this kind of what he calls i I think a test or exactly the meeting with outside where you get this feedback which comes not from a very particular situation which you predicted, but a feedback which comes from an unspecated angle and you either survive it or not in this sense. So the problem I think with cybernetics as a science is that it always considers feedback which goes through from a specific object, like some kind of sensor. Absolutely, yes. One talk about is a different kind of feedback, is the feedback from just being in a new situation, being outside. Yeah, essentially, in Norbert Weiner, and I remember,

it is not in fact Norbert Weiner's discovery, but Herbert von Bert Lamphy, when he wrote, you know, know the science of systems which is the canon of system engineering and system sciences. It was actually his insight that all of such things are based on what you might call to be context sensitive situations and that's why they have applications. The application is the index of their you know context sensitivity situation whereas land is here is trying to basically flatten this context sensitivity

in the sense in the sense that as I mentioned to you so here a problem rise. Okay, so you actually you mentioned it yourself. So imagine that it's not actually situation-based and it is according to that some sort of axiomatics for the constitution of the real or the machinic unconscious, okay? Let's imagine that is the case, okay?

Then the problem arises that this outside that you are talking about, the unknowing, how can you call it the unknowing? Because the very moment, the very moment you actually flattened the distinction between a cybernetic system with a tendency for concretization and a concrete system, namely a natural object, deprived of yourself of one chess move which is really fundamental. You see

science can study all natural objects by way of the inductive method. This doesn't mean that they are predictable I mean in a Laplacian sense but simply that you can talk about them by way of the inductive expectancy within a threshold of possibilities. Okay? Now you are, if so, if you have actually now flattened the distinction within the cybernetic system and natural system of objects, then you cannot, you can no longer say that the future will be unknown. Precisely because it can be, if it is really a natural object, it can be

subjected to the very inductive methods and probability logics which science uses to study natural objects. Hence it is no longer an alterity, it is no longer an unknown. And here we see the land falls back in the same trap that David Rodin had fallen into. But it's a criticism of cybernetics as a science, not... As a science, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, I mean, cybernetics is, I mean, you know that I basically, my thesis was on Anasov maps in cybernetics and chaotic dynamics and all such bullshit stuff.

yes no cybernetics is absolutely a science but just like all sciences is context sensitive and he's not by any means a fundamental science you cannot be understood as an axiomatic So, but another thing which, what defends his use of capitalism rather than, I don't know, someone's opinions or some other system of distinctions, is that he just says he's

like fascinated with how powerful it is because to make this kind of how do you say it in English middle middle bar like to put something in this position to give you this kind of insane feedback like very serious feedback that you can get from like a sensor or something else you need something very powerful and very all-encompassing such as capitalism in this sense so he needs some kind of a thing in itself so he needs some kind of i don't know uh video which would uh which would be something through which uh like in which some

kind of plane in which we can put things and test them if they survive enough and just capitalism is something which really works on like i don't know academic publishing right this is this is a system of feedback which at the same time gives you actual feedback rather than like can like randomly dismiss you know and at the same time subjects it to an absolutely unpredictable procedures and it's probably the only one which you can not speculate but you cannot speculate from those absolute speculate conclusions because that would just becomes again the case of the unknown and as other grown bomb has said it that which is unknown doesn't have an epistemological case essentially it is

as Kant was always saying is a fanaticism, a vagary of mind. It's essentially just basically an infantilist humanistic fantasy. If we have this fantasy, why not we have another fantasy? Why not a fantasy of the goddamned Stalinist communism? Oh yeah, you know, bring back a Stalin in the form of AGI. Why this rather than the other? So I think that yes, you're right, but I think that this needs to be handled quite carefully in the sense that because once the solution becomes totally arbitrary, as in the case of Rodin, then you have any

kind of solutions. You know, it's just you are essentially back in the realm of high scholasticism where you can talk about the dances of angels on the tip of the needle in different ways. Calculate different equations of motions for them, you know, but that is just like, you know, So we are not going to go that way. The most important thing I would say is that here a problem arises as you say. Capitalism is so powerful.

essentially, I failed to say or I failed to see that better alternatives have been put forward to capitalism at this moment by leftists like us. for some of you might not be leftist but I am a leftist. We have failed to it and yes. But that does not mean that capitalism is an inevitability then. Unless you ground it on facts. And in order to ground something on facts,

then you have to do the epistemological explanation. which of course, Lamp is not willing to do it. There is always an instance, like if I am to defend capitalism as a choice here, with judging instances like you and everyone else here, this is the arbiter, this is someone who decides if my arguments are powerful enough. Like we can appeal to objective reason, but in the end, this is what is going on here. And, but in like outside world, this is why we can't have a communism in one particular country, right? Because in the outside world,

the ultimate arbiter for truth right now is capitalism. You can't put out the product, which would be complete lie, complete bullshit, and still it will be successful. But so, and you can't put capitalism itself, as a trial of capitalism. If our own, if our very... Dilemma of that. Why don't you think that he wrote Dark Enlightenment? Because there are some goddamned people in the Middle East who don't buy into the ways of this version of capitalism that is penduling. And he's furious about it. You can neither establish this kind of

old vision of communism nor this universal capitalism. These are all what you might call to be illusions of the narcissistic ego, transcribed by way of whitewashing into socio-cybernetic economic paradigms. But none of them are actually true and the whole point of the left at this point should be to reveal how fragile both of these versions are. Not only how fragile these versions are but that we can have the possibility at this point, not the concreteness, the possibility of making a fundamentally new world. That's all we

can do at this point. Any sort of idea for revolution is to me is already failed to begin with at this point. I know that my leftist brethren and sisters if they hear this they would say that oh Reza what are you talking about? I mean capitalism is itself the cathedral in its own version. It is nothing but a cathedral, a closeted cathedral, a closeted cathedral, I would say.

So, Patrick, can you turn on your microphone? Yes. Okay, Patrick. So, okay, I don't know, I mean, we have some sort of total technical problem here in the sense that I really wanted to hear some last comments from everyone before we conclude our class. okay to solutions either we say goodbye right now or if you are the hero that you are the hero that you are come next Saturday or Sunday starts next Sunday

for 30 minutes, only for 30 minutes, I believe. I will cut it myself. For 30 minutes, with the hope that we can actually hear the last questions and just go a little bit of the conversation, that would be all. I have to check if we have a seminar next. Next, next. Let's see. I go into calendar. I think we don't have a seminar, but I'm not completely sure because if we have a seminar next week, we could not do it. I mean, if not next week, the week after that, I mean, it's not really a big deal.

necessary to do it next week at a certain certain time or if we even could do it uh in the week in the week i'm i'm completely free i mean just let me let me uh yeah yeah no actually this week i'm completely free as i told you that i'm still trying to recover so i'm not doing any kind of uh extra stuff yeah sure absolutely if people want to join in the week that would be great and those who can't, they can just see the recorded video. Since we are all leftists here, why not, let's be realistic and dare to try the impossible

and see if this still works. It doesn't matter. Just like, you know, obviously, you know, the whole point is that we don't need, I mean, everyone is welcome. But the thing is that obviously people who are really pressing questions at the end of the session are going to definitely come and pester me with good questions, which I would love. and then let's do it like that if you do if you have a Sunday time that would be fantastic if not we can make it during the weekend I mean sorry I apologize let's schedule it and make make it happen I'm also in this topic so I

really apologize I don't know I mean this is definitely not my fault I mean I mean, not everyone can be blamed on Reza at this point. But there is definitely a problem with Google Hangouts at this point. And I hope it will be resolved. OK, then why not close now and then do the session and I think it will not run for only half an hour. Yeah, you decide, you and Mo decide the date and send everyone and based on your availability,

you know, I would love to hear your questions and I'm so sorry, I'm really sorry that we couldn't have a conversation at the end. Yeah. Yes, okay. That's a good plan, I would say. Okay, superb. Then we'll meet again. Superb. Fantastic. Love you guys. Take care, everyone. Thanks, Reza. See you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.