On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 6)

Okay, hello and welcome to the sixth session of On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons by Reza Nicaristani. I'm now going to pass the mic. Reza, please take it away. Thank you very much, everyone. So my apologies that last session's revenge of tangents. As I mentioned at the end of last session, we are going to go over the stuff that we were supposed to talk about, but we are going to distribute it such that we do actually end with 12 sessions, not 13 sessions.

unfortunately precisely because you know new center cannot have more than 12 sessions. So I will try to add like 10-15 minutes per session. You know the time that we use for gossiping is now going to be allocated to time for education. So with that said, first before going to presentation and response, I would like you to speak about the book of Ardaviraf and how you see the problem of ethics and morality and estate law,

the tripatriate of what you might call to be morality in the modern sense, in the vein of Ardavirov Naame, the book of Ardavirov. The reason that I suggested, as I mentioned, the reason that I suggested this book, precisely because it is actually quite a late canonical text in Zorozhaurianism. It is not Avesta, it is not Yasna, which is the oldest part of the Abbasian texts, the monotheistic texts, it is the time when Zoroastrianism finally became a state-sponsored religion. And to that extent, it managed to exert a huge influence

on the subsequent development of Judaism and Christianity and of course Islam. So free takes any sort of ideas would be appreciated at this point. Reza, are we going to proceed regarding the socio-political platform which gave rise to to systematic religion or are we going to approach this thematic from a philosophical perspective?

More of the second, I would say, because this first one is something that is far more convoluted and it takes far more time and probably the issues that will be brought up during that kind of discussion will be off tangent with regard to our, you know, what we are trying to do here. But yeah, I will try to give a slight commentary as we move forward. Because that would be great to have some historical information on this side as well. Sure, sure. I will do that. I will do that. Okay. Friends. Don't let me to

Lynch you individually. Is it like general comments or more specifically about Anything that you have to offer. I was thinking about something more general, since I think most of us here are probably interested in your thoughts in a more general sense. But also, I feel like this Seminary is kind of an opportunity to grapple with your more

general thoughts about intelligence, navigation, etc. through this specific point of view, It's not necessarily that explicit in your work, which is what we might call a theological political dimension of the whole AGI, General Intelligence project. I've been re-watching some of your past seminars, and now I was watching the one on Plato, and I found this idea that I thought might be illuminating for our current discussion.

And that's the idea that in order to navigate the intelligible, moving from more general to more specific levels of reality, you would need this kind of double principle of the multiple and the one. I don't know if I'd be getting this right. The one as being constituted by this pure form of the good. something along those lines. And then this form of the good seems to me like it's like a principle that would guarantee that the destiny of the real in general would be intelligibility,

that all of the intelligible could be integrated in a way that's coherent and that as such could be potentially perfectly good. My question is, isn't this very fundamental move, which is at once ontological, epistemological, axiological, also a fundamentally theological-political move, in the sense that it establishes, to refer again to George's diagram, God as this unified pole of the intelligible and the devil or demons that are legion as the opposite pole of the multiple which resists intelligibility and constitutes a necessary step for the reconstruction of our concrete

model of intelligibility. So my question is, isn't there something fundamentally monotheistic to this Platonist schema, which is kind of indispensable for the project of this unlimited expansion of intelligence. Yes, okay. You see, when Plato in the earlier dialogues essentially had precisely the kind of monotheistic idea in mind, perhaps not in the sense that we call monotheism monotheism in our, you in our today's vocabulary, but he had a certain kind of idea of God and evil, right?

But the thing is that the transition from early or middle age Plato to late Plato was a different kind where he talks and that's what I'm referring to when he talks about the good. The good is no longer evil in contrast to evil. It is in fact indifferent to all sorts of what you might call to be anthropological and cultural ideas of evil and good.

It is nevertheless, it is still a principle, but it's a principle that is impersonal. You see, and that impersonality, this is why I think that I do believe that Plato actually created a certain kind, not in the today's sense, but in a rudimentary sense, an algorithmic idea of ethics, of virtual ethics, rinse and repeat kind of stuff, right? As long as you have that principle embedded within your personal actions and thoughts, you are good. But that

principle is not impersonal for Plato at least. The thing however, yes, you might say that isn't it also the case with these kinds of Erdavirathnameh or Avesta or Yasna, you know, the proto-monotheistic codes of ethical laws or morality that there is a certain kind of principle and that principle can always lead to a certain kind of duality between the good and the evil between

Ahura Mazda and Asha Mugham, which is basically the Ahri man, Satan. But no, I think that the idea of principle, the idea and principle can be understood in two different kinds of ways what we mean by principles of ethics in two kinds of ways one in terms of laws or coded laws by coded laws because not all laws

are coded. But coded laws. In that sense, yes, that just become the monotheistic creed. And that's why many what you might call to be middle-aged commentators try to assimilate Plato into their doctrine of Christianity morality, Christian morality. But there is a different kind of principle, which is that of a rule. The rule is revisable. A rule is something that always can be criticized.

A rule that is not intelligible is not a rule. For a rule to be intelligible, it means that you should be able to trace systematically how the premises of that rule connect to its consequences. Why is that, for example, that if I do X, I might bring upon myself Y? in the kind of religious text. Well, if you actually methodologically start to see laws, aka rules in the Platonic sense,

in the sense of connections, systematic connections, between the premises of human actions and the which are going to happen, then that is no longer monotheism. Because for monotheism, that's the whole point. For example, when you see R. W. Roth, Avesta, Yasna, Hinduism, so on and so forth. A certain kind of premise always leads to a certain kind of consequence. But just imagine that not all sorts of consequences could be concluded from certain kinds of premises

precisely because the link between the two could be diversified, could be multiplied. It could be just like think about the most mundane example, a video game. When you actually choose to be chaotic neutral, and humans are chaotically neutral in a dungeon and dragon sense of the things but does this mean that you become a chaotic evil

a chaotic this a good one naturally lawful this and that no it really doesn't mean anything It's just a premise. All it takes is the practical decisions. But here, an actual conundrum of monotheism starts. Do you know what that conundrum is? It's precisely because it takes, it does, actually early monotheism like Zoroastrianism and Manichism do believe that you can't over-expand premises to the consequences of your actions in the ethical or moral or lawful sense. It's just that

It all comes according to religion, Mantaistic religion in this context, it all comes to human's idea of the free choice. That it is a task of the human that even if the premises where such and such is capable of making something better. And that becomes essentially the Zorozharian monotheistic idea of morality and ethics of reward and punishment. But the thing is that from a different perspective, from an ethical perspective, would you actually say that it

all comes to individual free choice? Because if the individual free choice does not exist, which I do think it doesn't exist, then what happens to ethics? What happens to harvesting consequences from the premises of your actions? This is why the religion, religious crowds have a certain kind of misguided enmity toward the naturalistic challenge to free will. I'm not saying that the naturalistic

challenge to free will is well guided. I'm just saying that that's just their Achilles' hair. Because free will really doesn't matter within ethics. What matters is the rational will. And the rational will cannot be found either in nature or in pure reason. Reza, meaning must be constructed, rational will? Rational will is always an object of construction.

Yes, it is not a given. Absolutely not. And that is the whole point of ethics. Ethics, I don't want to sound Nicklandian, because that's just like a shit show of Landian positive feedback loop kind of stuff, which really is just like, you know, If you could explain the entirety of nature by positive feedback loop, then why the fuck do we need science? We could actually have to call it a positive feedback loop. Which actually sounds cooler than science and the word science. But that's the whole point. Yes, there is a positive feedback loop between the constructability

of rules, of morality, and ethics in the Espinozistic, Nietzschean, even Kantian sense. You ought to construct in order to emancipate. You ought to emancipate in order to be able to render yourself more capable of constructing these rules, revising them. As a practical philosophy, is this best conceived of as being necessary or more

expedient because I feel like it's the latter, like this kind of results more often in the right kind of outcomes or this is a good sort of guiding principle, but it's not a necessary principle in the sense that, I mean, I think it would take a lot of... Would you be able... So when I hear the word necessary or necessity, I have a very specific context for them. Would you be able to tell me what you mean by necessary here? Yeah, sure. So I think what I'm taking necessary to mean is that it's kind of, it vouchsafes that that

specific good outcome will happen. Oh, no. So you mean certainty? Yeah, maybe I mean certainty. Yeah, it's possible. No, no, no. So this is why I said necessity in the post-critical philosophy, post-cant, essentially means by the rule. By the rule. Not by the law of nature. By the rule. Rule is something that can be revised, that can be adjusted, that can be manipulated for the good or bad, but that is really the principle. That's all we have. So by necessity simply means by the rule.

Necessity in the sense that you mentioned it is more like what later post-Kantians called certainty. No, certainty is never granted in these kinds of forms. Okay. Preza, I wonder, so my question is about the positive feedback loop. I wonder what are the elements of the positive feedback loop? Is it Is it the reason and nature? Or so between which elements does it take place? It is between rule, namely revisable principles,

revisable objective principles, precisely because you see the word objectivity in post-Kantian philosophy is not like nominal objectivity, right? It's not something out there you cannot access. For something to be objective as a matter of objectivity, it should be first of all at the most rudimentary level be experienced by individuals, But that doesn't render it objective. For something to be objective in that sense, it means that it can be actually logically reconstructed such that it can be shown that

what is experienced as objective is shared among everyone regardless of their shape, their color, so on and so forth. So there is a positive feedback loop between that idea of objectivity of rules and the problem of the good, which is the problem of emancipation. You have to revise your rules in order to get more objective. You have to revise your objectively conceived rules in order to gain more concrete freedom

for emancipation. And you have to revise your concrete freedom by way of practical reasoning and a struggle, such that it leads to more opportunities for you as a collective to revise your objective rules. But positive feedback loop refers to a process, refers to a, as far as I understand, an asubjective process. Once it starts, it has consequences that you cannot foresee, right? You cannot foresee them, but you can channel them. That is the whole point. You see, there is nothing also subjective within the realm of revising rules.

Because a subject, an individual subject in the classical sense, cannot revise rules of ethics or rules in general. Rules can only be changed and revised intersubjectively, namely collectively. So that's one. So with that said, if you think about this formula that I just mentioned within an intersubjective reality because anything that is remotely connected with objectivity, with rule, even with laws of nature, you know, coded laws of nature and so on and so forth, is ultimately

intersubjective. And that intersubjectivity is really the core issue of ethics. So imagine When we are talking about the collective, for example, let's think about the Blacks, about the Middle Easterners, the Diatro, the Freaks. When we are talking about... Sorry. Who said what? I think it was echo of your own voice Reza from some of the students. That sounds very critical.

So, what I was saying that everything that we are ever putting forward with regard to such issues is always intersubjective. They are essentially implicitly collective. And that's the whole point of ethics. Ethics is not something individualistic caprice. It is collective. And it is the whole curse of religion that tries to either reduce collectivity to some sort of crypto-individualism or tries to turn individualism into certain kinds of crypto-collectivism. No, the real ethics begins with this idea that everything that we ever decided, everything

that we ever thought, everything that we ever imagined, in the most parochial sense, even looking at the grass, seeing it as green. It is implicitly collective. It has not given to you by certain kinds of immediate intuition. The point of ethics, however, is to take this further and that's also the point of a concrete politics to render this very fact explicit where did it come from it came from the collective how can it be more collective how can it be an instrument

for more collectivization, more ethical injunctions, and not moral injunctions, so on and so forth. That requires a certain kind of understanding what you might call to be dialectics, between individual experience and the collective objectivity. When I'm saying individual experience, I don't mean that you Bobos have actually an experience. No, you don't. You only have experience by virtue of living in a breathing language mongering society.

that constitutes your very idea of experience and subjectivity. And when I am talking about collectivity, I don't mean it's some cancelling swarm of ex-Marxists chasing you on Twitter. No, I actually mean practical self-consciousness essentially that there is a concrete determination of who you are

in what context you are brought up in what context you feel like a human and not otherwise using certain kind of tractable methods and epistemologies. That's the whole point. And that's just like, to be honest with you, it's just like shitty Marx 101. There is nothing mysterious about it. About the positive feedback we've seen, trying to connect it back to what I was trying to

ask, it's like, it would seem to me like there is, why am I thinking about this, like the practical necessity of having demons would correspond to our practical necessity of having God. That's like starting point of provocation. Because it would seem that if it is about positing certain models and then reforming them in relation to the emergence of demonic resistance, unless you have, and then you can maybe connect it to all these two, as far as I understand it, unless you have this kind of illumination from a guarantor, like this absolute idea of the good,

that the guarantee that this process is going to take you somewhere and not anywhere, how could you distinguish this rational feedback process from a hyperstition, from just like, you know, you consolidate your model and then your model is going to be your black hole into a different dimension, which has your own rules, which you're going to be like- Isn't this the whole point? The tractability of method. The tractability of method. With hyperstition, to be honest with you, I just really don't know still what on earth hyperstition is supposed to be. You know, but let us move forward with the kind of definitions that are put forward by

the prophets of superstition, land and so on and so forth. If that is the case, then yes, that is just merely what you might call to be a blind metaphysical adventure. I would say that the difference between hyperstition and rationality is precisely the tractability of the methods involved, the systematicity, such that you can actually critically talk about methods rather than merely saying that this is inevitable. Nothing

in the world is inevitable. That would be just morality, that would be just evil. Ethics in the Espinozistic sense emerge from the ruins of Christianity precisely because Espinoza for the first time creates certain kinds of mechanics or the understanding of the mechanics of the principles that go into humans' practical reasoning, rather than just, you know, basically

attributing them to some nominum, to some sort of inevitability, to some sort of natural law which is inevitable, so on and so forth. And that's why monotheism is evil. It is evil par excellence. There has been probably nothing more evil on this goddamn shitty planet than monotheism itself. It captures the very essence of when the human collectively understood deceives himself to

be free in a wrong way. any source of free will should be taken out of the fucking window there is no such a thing as free will in the in the kantian sense free choice a free choice in the classical sense not, I mean, this is a very, of course, a very thorny term, but that's what I'm saying in the classical sense. Free choice in the classical sense is simply the idea of human master over his complete actions and thoughts.

and religion, evil, morality, feeds on that and essentially it tries to say that, tries to symbolize it as Jung or Schelling were talking about it. They try to tell you that if your free will is taken away, then you are in the arena of evil. But then there is also a different kind of will, the rational will.

The rational will doesn't actually care about the human as a natural kind. That is the whole point. Only human as a natural kind has a free will or might have a free will. Human is not a natural kind. Human is an artifact. This is the core of ethics. And you can do so much with it, and so much to humanity. Could you say maybe that the difference then between the modern-seistic God and the idea

of the good is that the modern-seistic God is a kind of a human mirror projection which which would make it moral. Yes, projection into the nominal realm. Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely, yes. I mean, this is why that I think that there is a grain of human insurrectionism, in Taoism, in Confucianism, human insurrectionism in Taoism or in Confucianism that is completely against these kinds of monophysics understanding of human that there is no god that is the reflection

involuntarily inadvertently by some sort of uh you know uh manipulation or otherwise that would be the reflection of the human if there is a god it should be constructed from the human here and now the gods are constructions not reflections But of course, that is essentially the ultimate assault on monotheism. Nietzsche understood parts of it, but not all of it. Reza? Yes.

Hey, I'm thinking in this like functionalist sense of religion, that perhaps maybe one reading of it could be that, that like its role is to be like a kind of to ward off like positive feedbacks in the sense of like the code of rules is like, don't kill your don't kill your neighbor, because that will destabilize society that you know, the violence will self propagate. you know, don't till the land on certain years because then the soil would deteriorate and then that will destabilize society. Yes, don't look at your wife, your friend's wife because you destabilize society.

Yeah, so if it's a functionalist mode of religion as a negative feedback loop, then maybe there's this, you could read free will through that as well, because if people think they don't have free will, then they might start acting as if they don't have free will. and it doesn't matter if they do or they don't, but there's like, if you believe you're compelled to commit certain acts, then it almost opens up that, like, the class disruptions and things that you see in a materialist understanding of history. Yeah, well, this is actually quite a very interesting point. And this is, okay, so,

So essentially, yes, there are two ways to go with the problem of the free blow, what you might call to be the brute material this way, you know, and you can get a lot of it in the today's rational choice theory, AI philosophies, neuroscience, so on and so forth. But the thing is that I would say that take it baby steps. And do you know what the baby steps is? It's what Kant called the as if argument.

Pretend as if. Don't actually lose sleep whether you have fucking free will or not. probably you don't. But do it as a practical experiment. Just like Kant said, if you are not sure if something exists or not, whether something is true or not, whether something is necessary or not, take it as an as-if argument, pretend as if free will didn't exist, rather than existed. So that actually I would say that get rid of a lot of crap that goes into these kinds of

discussions and there is a lot of crap to be honest with you about the problem of free will. Because the problem of free will is one of the most confused concepts ever put forward by the organ of philosophy. What is free will? Does it mean that you're acting, for example, if I am helping you to do something just, something good, am I helping you simply by the whim of the causal mechanisms

that make me to help you or something else. I think that the whole point of free will is just an antiquated concept. It's more like the word ether or phlogiston. It utterly should be cast aside for us to come up with better concepts. to actually see what ethics is, what authoritarianism is, what morality is, so on and so forth, to pin down all of this stuff

on fucking one goddamn shoddy concept, such as free will, is nothing but a theological act, not a philosophical. Okay, let's have a drinking bathroom break and then we'll shall break and read.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Before everyone shows up, any gossip, any news about the states of the world and ethics? I had a great name to describe the current phenomenon. Probably a few other people have

heard it, but in case you haven't, ACAB Spring is what people are calling it. You know, like as in Arab Spring, Akab Spring. So I'm enjoying that a lot. That's all I have to say about it. But yeah. Is it going to follow the consequences of Arab Spring too? Like Muammar Gazzafi getting Sulemanis by the violence. Very, frankly. It does vary with Arab Spring. But, um, so I mean, yes, because, uh, it's not, not clear, but I think, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's, uh, I don't think there's going to be any spectacular, um, yeah, dethroning of, of, of, of political figures from, from an outsider perspective.

I don't know. I'm not in, I'm not in the US. So, where are you, if I may ask? I'm in London. Oh, I see. I see. Okay, here my idea that before everyone joins in, I, to be honest with you, I really think that BLM is a far more organized movement than Occupy Wall Street. There are reasons for it. One is the historical struggle that has been cultivated. But then there is also, which is also a side quest of this, is them being capable of getting

quite a great amount of capital. By that I mean money recognition, so on and so forth. But so what? That's what revolutions do happen. I mean, looking at the Wall Street, these are just a bunch of Brooklyn-ited people. who are carrying a latte or an iced coffee, going to the park, revolting against the system. No. BLM is far more organized, robust, capable, financially, you know, structured. But I would say that BLM is just a fraction of the revolution yet to come.

That's the kind of revolution, unfortunately, I really don't think it is going to happen in our lifetime. No amount of race revolution, yes, they are necessary. They are necessary. That's the whole point that I'm trying to make. We have to make such a stepwise revolution and organizations and so on and so forth. But that kind of revolution that the classical Marxist has in mind is absolutely never going to happen in our lifetime. person who is really is obsessed with the prospect of it lives probably in his mom's

basement and not on the streets. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, I agree actually, to be honest, I think, I think you need to have like a posthumous kind of outlook with your politics and, and, you know, in terms of, I think for me personally, it helps a lot to think political action in terms of, I mean, a kind of a modesty or humility in terms of like, just as it's true of BLM not being the kind of vanguardist or like capable of on its own bringing about- An exemplar for our own time. An exemplar, a modest exemplar of our own time.

nothing more nothing more than that but compared to the goddamn fucking Occupy Wallace Jesus Christ I was I was only a teenager when that happened and I was in Ireland at the time but even then it was a good learning experience maybe I remember when it happened I was in Iran actually. Kristen was with me. Kristen is American. And she was like the naysayer. I was like, you know, full on the revolutionary hormone.

and she said that these are just goddamn fucking Brooklyn people now they are going to carry their goddamn you know coming from art galleries and then going to the park with their most expensive iced coffee they're not going to win anything I don't know I think I think they're not gonna I'm obviously alone, but I'm also kind of... Yes. I mean, my wife is quite cynical when it comes to these kinds of stuff. But to be honest with you, after I have actually met with the members of Occupy Wall Street, I think that they are confused.

They were confused and they are confused at this point. They want everything. You can't get everything in the revolution. You have to make baby steps. And that's why revolution is so disappointing to people who are getting overexcited and so macho about revolution. Revolution is something that can only happen over the course of many, many, if not generations. And these people think that you can just overthrow capitalist economy in the New York

sense. And there are of course the Chinese capitalism, so on and so forth, Southeast Asian capitalism, which are different beasts altogether. And you will be fine. No, you have to create platforms for education, for militarization, for conning, for lobbying, for everything. It is not going to happen. Absolutely not. It is, do you know what it is? It is exactly the vision of America, thinking that it comes to the Middle East and can make these nations democratic overnight, exporting freedom to people overnight, well, fuck is

not going to happen. It, in fact, is going to backfire, as we have seen it. You have to fight with the understanding that you are not going to get the fruits of the revolution. And that makes you a good revolution. I think that's kind of interesting in relation to what some of what we've been reading about. You know, there is like, I mean, I don't want to open the whole other thing now, but there's a kind of religious character to this kind of dedication as well, right? Like there's an abdication of the worldly

reward for it that needs to be adopted as a kind of stance. Yes. I mean, the most basic point of ethics and also revolution is something like that. Point one. The point is not to live in this wretched world to which we have accustomed to but to leave it behind. Number two, but how can we leave it behind? To leave a world behind requires to unmake the existing world, step by step.

Baby step. Number three. The world that you can make outside of this wretched world, most probably is not going to be a new world. It is new in a relative sense. Precisely because evil borrows and inherits certain kind of factors from the world you lived in enhance the infinite task of the revolution. What Ben Singleton calls the infinite jailbreak.

If you are not into infinite jailbreak, then I think that you should simply go to some kind of Appalachian mountains, wearing red shirts and red pants, a symbolism of communism, and chop woods while living in a commune. But that's just the shittiest communism that you can expect. It's okay, right? Like, that's the missing element is that they're not intending to carry out raids from the

mountains in the first place. And I don't know. Yeah, no, but I agree with you. I think... To be honest with you, there are a lot of things that are wrong with what I call, perhaps when I was younger, mistakenly called kitsch Marxism. I didn't know that basically one of the Wolfitz, I think, used that word too. I had no idea about that. But what I would call the trait of Kitsch Marxism is precisely this. It's something that, you know, a lot of bravado.

But when it comes to the mundane tasks, which actually do make a revolution at the end of today, they don't want to subscribe to that. To be honest with you, at this point I would say that sure. Okay, let's see if you can actually do that. My frustration with Marxism as a communist. It's really not about the ideals, it's not about who is going to be ruling and that and that. It's just about methodology.

These people really don't have methodology. They have zero respect for science. I mean look at them. They think that medical sciences should be distrusted. Yes, medical science should be distrusted within the context of scientific method. That's what science is. But then they try to come up with some sort of alternative. Essentially this is one of the really I think things that I learned from good Marxists. Do you know of EndNote? So in early times EndNote people particularly

Rob Lucas were completely on the sides of this idea that if capitalism or if law which is subsumed has completely assimilated every social relations then communitarian politics politics is the only politics to go with. But then, Rob had this enlightenment, which he noticed that there is no such a thing as a totality of affairs. There is no such a thing as a totality of capitalism, totality of patriarchy, so on and so forth. These are,

what you might call to be the pathologies of capitalism information system. And he fundamentally put that aside. I think, yes, we have to pay attention to this, that so many of our so-called or alleged revolutionary ambitions are coming from the fact that we are living in a capitalist society without any sort of self-consciousness. Reza, I was thinking this is something that's interested me for a while,

like what kind exact, not exactly, but like I can connect the whole problem of intelligence and your your approach to science with the political practical question in a very very abstract way but I'd be interested in understanding what kind of more or less concrete more immediate kind of if you could think of any more concrete examples of how this how the relation between intelligence and political practice would would play out like and maybe in connection to like you know there's like some parts of left accelerationism which are concrete sense like in the in the everyday colloquial concrete plan right yeah we're like in a

political platform because I sound like a Stalin but it's okay I would say that illegalize every sort of anti-scientific community or anti-scientific community method in education systems all across the world. Absolutely begin with the idea of a communist education. And we have actually really good examples

of the communist education by Witkowski and Tolstoy and so many Washington. The idea of education is the only thing that we can go and use it as a platform. It's just a source for a true revolution. Third, I would say that any sorts of crypto-Marxists send them to the goddamn moon gulags with no remotes and no regrets. But yeah, this kind of solution is either the educational or the gulag think is something that you have already to put yourself in a kind of sovereign position in order

to to yes that unfortunately yes like the construction how do you get to the situation in which you would have this kind of obviously obviously obviously uh but uh you can you can think about that kind of control mechanism either in terms of an individual like Uncle Stalin, or in terms of certain kind of informed and trusted individuals who are either in science, in engineering, in philosophy, so on and so forth. They would

have their own disagreements, but nevertheless they do tend to come up with something robust for the time being, in the context of our time. You know, anything, I mean literally, this is the whole point, you can't get a revolution, you can't get a good response to even goddamn COVID-19 in one moment in time. You should understand that these responses are all contingent. The whole point of the actual revolution is to understand that there are contingents,

that every response that we make to the enemies, like for example if I am a Stalin and I want to scratch your name off of my notebook, it would be contingent. Maybe I'm drunk tonight. I think about this as a rational person. I said that oh maybe I'm drunk and I will look at this name more closely. I might actually execute you, maybe not. The same thing goes with these kinds of endeavors, that there should be a certain kinds of mechanism in place that force people to

to essentially look at the methods that they are using, the decisions that they have made, so on and so forth. That's the whole point of the revolution, revising your decision, revising your methods. Otherwise, other than that, literally, there is absolutely zero distinction between communism and fascism. That's why I think scalability needs to be accounted for in terms of revolution.

There is no totality. If you think of totality, you go back to ideology, if we talk about Marxists. Well, I actually like to be in the totalitarian position, but that is a different subject. I mean, I have a couple questions with this. Is an ideology wrong if it doesn't claim to be, like, aspire to be universal? So if you don't intend to be virulent, and if you don't intend to expand your Marxism beyond the confines of your folk politics, does that make it innate wrong um i mean i instinctively i think yes but i don't know and secondly like um like um in terms of um in terms of like i've been thinking a lot about like how um you know certain um

systemic differences in the covid19 uh political systemic differences have produced such different results in covid19 uh response and like you've got like the socialist and communist sort of responses have been far better, you know, with Cuba sort of exporting doctors and like China's handled it like pretty well, but like on the outward face of it now. But like, I don't sure, I'm thinking like, I don't know, is there any sort of like inevitability to like how science is, relates to like the, like this political system? And I don't know, I'm thinking about like the Stalin's I don't think so. with Shokin Lysenko and the kind of how like Stalin's regime was, you know, into this sort of like fraudulent kind of like

Did you say fraudulent? Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, like he believed that. Are you actually insulting Uncle Stalin? well Lysenko was basically like he's wrong and Stalin supported him like unequivocally like and he basically believed that you could splice different plants together and the genes would transfer and make for better crop yields but like the like and they persecuted all the biologists who dissented with him so I think that like that's it's not necessarily like an outcome of either innate political system. You see, the problem here is,

uh, on the surface, uh, it appears as if it is simply the dichotomy between a state bureaucracy and rigorous scientific methods laid out by a scientific community which can be objective in the best possible scenario. But that is not really the case. The real problem is the epistemic thrust of the people both in the government and in science. That is something that cannot be constructed overnight.

Otherwise, I'm going to tell you, the greatest man lived on this planet. every one of you should make a model out of it. Reza, I have a remark as well. I knew back then in Iran a couple of really professional revolutionaries, But they are not keen on being revisable. As a matter of fact, if you talk about revision amongst Marxists, you immediately receive the label as revision.

Heretic. That's the top heretic. Yes. Yes. I mean, at the end of the day, the revolutionaries, in order to be revolutionary, they had to be arrogant as a stone. Yes, what Kant calls fanaticism in the Kantian sense, fanaticism. How can we get around that problem? From the perspective of education, I mean. Yes, that's the whole point. Yes, I would say that any sort of revolutionary movement will inevitably lead to fanaticism in the Kantian synopsis. The only safety switch that you might have

is to, over a course of time, teach them the virtues of methodology. You see, fascism and Marxism, the greatest ambitions of fascism and the greatest ambitions of Marxism do in fact coincide when they don't have great myodology.

But what does it mean to have a myodology? That's the question of ethics as opposed to morality or law. Well, it is the question that a method should be tracked, should be something that can be plugged in by any person of the collective it should be open source because if a method is not tractable no matter what your ideals are you're most probably on the side of god damn Allah

If not Hitler. Allah is worse than Hitler, by the way. To put it as a simple question, do you think that science should be the guiding thread of a revolution? like should be no no no absolutely not absolutely not no no no science science science is actually quite humble in this scope and ambitions even though there are some really crazy scientists out there you know crackpots so to speak no it's the method the scientific method that should be

be appropriated. Not the goddamn fucking scientists. Do I really need to have a scientist on my fucking revolutionary force? Probably not. I mean, how many of you have actually had interactions with scientists, with individual scientists, not the scientific community claims, which is respectable and should be followed. But scientists are nothing more than some crackpots philosophers, for that matter politicians. I wouldn't mean scientists, but wouldn't you, I mean, when you're talking about Stalin,

I'm always imagining that you want to kind of rebuild Stalin as an AGI. Isn't that the whole point? yes I think that a Stalin could be a great AGR he's unpredictable he can terminate enemies without even knowing them, so on and so forth. Yeah, that makes Stalin one of the greatest AGI possibly, but no. My interest in Stalin is rather Zizekin in the sense that

The final fight that will come, inevitably, between the forces of democracy, the forces of emancipation, and the forces of pure authoritarianism masquerading as being democratic, I think that there should be no qualm to send them to the Mars Gulags. That's my only, what you might call, to be a Salinist impulse.

Well, it's also smoking, which makes me inevitably a fan of saline. But other than that, nothing really. I'm not really a good Marxist. Okay, so hi everybody. I'm going to play Killjoy again. Carl, you go. Yes, no, but so I mean we're talking about science a lot here and I think I would like to hear a bit more about your, if you will, philosophy of science because I mean clearly I don't think you have when you talk about science you probably don't have the idea of a kind of a persian ideal sort of finished completed science but but and we are

sort of in in fact sort of seeing more and more sort of fracturing into discrete sciences that are there's sort of becoming ever more fractured and that is not only sort of in fields of study but it's also something of a sort of methodological thing is it not yes and and if we're talking we can go quite a long back way back and talk about sort of you know just different descriptions of how the scientific method actually sort of plays out and we can you know we can think of sort of where our abans work and sort of look at sort of how is science actually conducted and sort of scientific claims actually validated and sort of I wonder a little bit what exactly do you think are the claim what is what is the value of proper scientific claims and sort of

what status do they have and how can one discriminate between what I suppose you would say is proper science and what would be disqualified for the revolutionary programme, if you will. Because I think if this method is to be appropriated, it is quite important to be very clear about exactly what it entails in practice, especially if it is meant to work on the present and the trajectory of the sciences that we are seeing. Yes. Karl, a super fantastic question as always. May I ask you one question before I actually answer you? That with regard to this dichotomy of proper science and what you might call to be cryptoscience,

How do you see ethics, the division between ethics and morality, with regard to that kind of dichotomy within sciences? Could you elaborate a little bit on the background of that question first? So for example, the very idea of morality in the canonical monotheistic sense, not in in a modern sense, comes from the idea of laws, laws which are inevitable and you have to agree with them in order to proceed, in order to make something better in whatever

context what it means. Whereas there is a certain kinds of notion of science put forward by 20th century scientists or philosophers of science. I mean the actual scientists would be Einstein, Heisenberg, the philosopher of science that I have in mind, Kana, Kone, and so on and so forth, that science, yes, there is something very, very special about it.

But, when you actually look into its system, you notice that the way that science does things is not very special. It is actually the special case of what we have always been striving to do, namely rectifying the biases of our methods and ideas. Which is kind of mundane, to be honest with you.

I mean, yes, indeed it is. But I think there are several questions hidden here. And I think one thing that when we're talking about philosophy of science, we have to, of course, distinguish between sort of prescriptive ideas about how science should work. we can, you know, Karl Popper for instance, and sort of the more descriptive accounts of how science or what might be styles itself science or style science works. And I don't know, it's, I guess my point is that we probably have to go deeper into trying to sort of break up the category of science because, well, yes, we are talking about sort of progressive

iteration of methods that are taking on, you know, becoming increasingly specialized and are fracturing, but does that in some sense perhaps imperilability, or let me ask this way instead, what is happening to the idea of a unified science and the entire sort of project of a science, if that is the case, if we're seeing an increasing sort of fragmentation and specialization of actual sort of a factual sort of method that are being employed instead of speaking of a generalized scientific method. And I mean, I think, and to what extent can we actually do so anymore? Karl, I would say that the problem here is that when you look at, for example,

take about, for example, a string theory physicist, the most hated physicist that do exist on this goddamn planet. Like no one wants to actually listen to them. They do actually consider them as charlatans and then there are thermodynamists, gravitationists, kind of physicists or astrophysicists at large. But the thing is that all of these factions do in fact use a certain kind of

method, a canonical method. Maybe not in a wrong, in a right way, but nevertheless they do use the tools of the epistemic method, epistemic scientific method. That's why I think that there is in fact a certain kind of dominion which we can call today science, precisely because they do use certain kinds of methods and not others. So where then would you, sorry to sort of push you on this, but where would you draw

the line between what you might call science and not science then? Would you include something like biology and then the social sciences and sort of what kinds of methodologies and methods within the social sciences if that is somewhere where you'd like to draw the line? Probably I would say that, you know, biology, physics, social sciences are all sciences. But then let's make a more extreme case, like shamanism and science and their respective methods. Right, so in that sense I think it comes to what Kant already had said it.

The problem of quid juris, by what right? The question of visistemology par excellence. So even crackpot physicists trying to answer the problem of quid juris, whereas a shaman in the new age sense, I'm not talking about the old shaman, the new shamans, the kind that you see in the European Union, most probably Germany, they would say that the problem of quick juries

actually doesn't matter by what right. That's just a hang up of civilization. That's the whole point. As long as you are within the epistemological critique of quid juries, by what right, no matter how much shit you say, how much crackpotism you exercise, you probably might be part of scientific community. Once investigated thoroughly. But the moment that you get rid of that kind

of method, there is nothing else. It's either what, I mean, one of the greatest things that I have seen really to my surprise on my Twitter is that these people who are talking about the medical community idea of all ideas and not just the collective quarantine and so They were ill-conceived precisely because the medical community is a religious community.

And who the fuck are these people? Bunch of fucking shamans. Mysticism par excellence. And do you know what mysticism is? Do you know what it can do to someone's mind? Well, it doesn't do anything other than parasitizing it because it has zero amounts of logic. logic of what it does is just what you might call to be, in Kantian sense, the

vagary of speculation. Let us pretend that there is such thing exists outside of our mundane human life. and it exerts influence upon us. Well, fuck that shit. If I don't know it, if it is unknown unknown, then probably it doesn't have a case. Anything that is the unknown unknown, that you can neither track, trace it, methodologically, systematically nor by way of the rational scientific procedure doesn't have a case.

It really doesn't have a goddamn case. And Reza, if it does, then it's a religious one, right? Because I'm trying to connect that with obviously. it's muhammad's religion and not drouge's because i am yeah drouge is a yeah oh drouge i love drouge drouge religion is my religion yeah don't don't step on drouge's tail but it's most probably muhammad's religion yeah yeah because i was just plain thinking about

Augustine, since we were supposed to, I'm actually supposed to present about it, it seemed to me that the Book of Confession is a vain attempt on Augustine's side to try to construct this methodology that we are talking about regarding Catholicism, and he fails. That's how I read Augustin. Absolutely, yes. And to be honest with you, I don't want to make a big deal out of it or over-exaggerate it. But yes, I'm a philosopher.

I'm entitled to over-exaggerate fucking things. And I would say that Augustin is precisely something like an ex-Marxist turning into alt-right in our age. And do you know what we are going to do with these kinds of people? Cancel! Okay, let us start with our presentation. with our presentation and maybe more controversy of rights.

Sure. Actually, I haven't prepared a presentation in its traditional sense. I assembled a brief text. If I'm allowed, I'd like to read it to you all. Yeah? Please. So, the book of memory, from derangement to artifice. And from thee, O Lord, unto whose eyes the abyss of man's conscience is naked, what could be hidden in me, though I would not confess it? For I should hide thee from me, not me from thee. St. Augustine deploys his praise and prayer

such that the metaphysics of Sufism follows underneath each line. It is an effective technique of insinuation common among Eastern mysticism and the Neoplatonic school of Catholicism. However, this analysis should scrutinize the 10th book of Confessions with less focus on the socio-political platform of the time of Augustine, which gave rise to such style and implications, but rather approached the text with a general presupposition that all works of literature serve solely one purpose, deception. That being said, the analysis would be bound to defy the truth principles as

the main referential points of the text, which comprise the core pillar of confessions. Let us then call the tenth book the book of memory. For, quote, the moment the memory then is as it were the belly of the mind and joy and sadness like sweet and bitter food which when committed to the memory are as it were passed into the belly where they may be stowed but cannot taste. Quote end. Augustine proposes a two-folded concept of memory on various occasions throughout the book. It is essential to note that memory for him is a, quote, a deep and boundless manifoldness.

Quote end. Nevertheless, he narrows this exceeding immense down into two categorical realms of sensibility from which memory as such would be derived. One is the sentient memory, a compiling treasury of pictures yelled by the senses. It is common between man and beast, susceptible to concupiscent perversions and illusory since it appears as phenomena to the senses of an erroneous creation. The other is the primordial memory, a large and boundless chamber of hollow caverns and yawning recesses wherein forgetfulness lurks unbound.

Its essence is of elemental imperceptibility, its movements and slippages of becoming inorganic. The latter envelopes the former such that the downfall of remembrance against forgetfulness would be rendered inevitable. In the aforementioned allegory by Augustine, the sentient memory is equivalent to the foot and the primordial memory to the belly. That notwithstanding, God as the uncontainable unconsciousness inhabits precisely those niches of oblivion on the topography of the mind. For Augustine, God is the abyss beyond any kind of perception, the vastness within which

all dissipated particles of creation wander eternally. Thus the illusory shroud of sentient memory conceals the truth of God and hinders man from ascending to the heavenly heights. Although sensory faculties guide man ahead, but metaphysically they distract him on the cosmic scale. For Augustine, the problematic of evil arises precisely where he identifies sentient memory as illusory and misguiding asceticism. Therefore, he proposes a set of practices that on the one hand lead man towards derangement and the realms of oblivion to render him worthy of his holy reunion with the one, in other

words to impinge upon unconscious through reduction of the conscious, on the other hand, to artifice the segregated self anew as the holy self from the material excavated out of the realm of primordial memory. However, one can sense a stream of doubt throughout Augustine's argument, which occasionally makes him tremble whilst praising his God. The tempting enchantment of the primordial memory makes him doubt his own truth principle that he attributes to this kind of memory. In the last passages, he surrenders to his cowardice regarding the abyss and abandons

his proposition of artificial memory as a synthesis of the other two to the invisible hand of God. Supposing that the core project of Augustine, and morality to some extent, is the reconstruction of self, although this project had gone disarray long ago, one can ponder upon alternative techniques of constructing artificial memory. Considering memory as a complex collective of sensory data renders the experience and functions of memory as Phenomenal. In the context of everydayness, one experiences memory as transparent, i.e.

as a part of consciousness. In quote, we are the sum of our memories, we are the extension of our lived experiences. So says the common sense. Well, in fact, the only authentic source to differentiate between dream and reality in in a general sense, is the faith in the accountability of memory. On the contrary, the scientific facts regarding, for example, implantation of false memories, the scientific facts open a strange new horizon to us, which requires serious revisions in our perception of memory, not as a reflection of lived experience, but as a made-up artifact,

all of which demands a set of manipulating techniques to overcome the rigid authenticity attributed to memory all along. To grasp a better notion of manipulation, one could take into account different kinds of maniac behavior. Phonomania, one who can hear sounds, voices, noises like the sage, like the prophet. Faciomania, seeing faces as both deformed and semi-human, as if stemming from outside on celestial and galactical scale, xenophilia. Algomania, to form a recollection of pain by contemplating the details, like Ballardian eroticism. Or

Or, malismomania, being contaminated by the illusion of some peculiar micro-life form or micro-thought form. Phobomania, designing the apocalypse, impending doom of the planet without us, and etc. In this sense, one becomes the agent of destruction, the deranged mind, to the extent that the notion of so-called self would disappear. being abducted by the future self in the labyrinth of the mind. I hope it makes sense. I was just rambling. Superb. Fantastic. Maybe I shouldn't actually.

I have certain kinds of responses to deliver, but maybe at this point we should go with their response and then I can probably join them together. Sure. What a task to follow that up. So I have just like a very small reflection on this concept of memory in Augustine. And so I was going through the chapter 10 and I felt that memory is Augustine Caesar as this fault to me that he doesn't make space for the imaginative space of the lack.

so memory for him is this almost stringent dialogical relationship with what that has happened and then he makes some allowances for some stuff that has been forgotten whilst in actuality memory moves the most powerfully when it's anchored to fabulation to the thing that doesn't happen or the thing that hasn't yet happened or which I find the most interesting of all the thing that could never have happened um and so kind of seeing the memory as the site of the lie par excellence um and this is because memory is actually mostly constituted by falsehoods and what we um i believe we've defined a few um sessions ago as the plot uh what is

plotting in one's mind and that is precisely because it constitutes the self and it's kind of in this like picking and choosing of which forces best adhere to oneself that one operates and and then I was actually having a memory of this in in the law so there is this kind of this principle in the law that says testis unus, testis nullus, which very broadly means that the testimony can never come from one agent. So whenever there is like a testimony of one person in the law, that is very easy to discredit. And so whenever that happens,

the law requires for the testimony of at least two people to be kind of present for it to be valid. And so if multiple memories are not present, the fact is not corroborated. And so in that regards, I kind of felt and maybe similarly to what Damon was saying that Augustine misses the mark by not ascribing truth and memory to also like a group action, like something that is manifold and something that kind of conceives of a people as a repository of truth and knowledge or maybe in the way as I see it as a repository of like a more elaborate

collective lie but at least one that holds up a little bit better so yeah that's kind of my small reflection of memory and then yeah I would be interested to know what else you think of that So, one of the things that I have from Tom is that, and please Tom do correct me if I'm wrong, There is a certain kind of ongoing battle or warfare at the heart of morality and ethics,

the art of monotheism, aka organized religion, and myth-making as religion. Myth-making as religion is quite a respectable endeavor. But then something went wrong. There's also the point that Nietzsche actually tries to make, something went wrong. From his so-in-law perspective, when this happened, most broadly in so many anthropological

the sons of religion, that thing that went wrong was at the time of the inception of Zoroastrianism. either Avisal in pre-Islamic Persia or in Rw Rav Namai or Vendida, the Book of Demons, after the voice of Christianity. nevertheless the real question here is that so we have these free you know

ancient civilizations where the problem of demon seeing defile men so on so forth cannot be actually mapped onto the very same problems that we do have in organized religion. So, with that said, the real question would be at this point that what exactly went wrong, probably at what time, but what exactly went wrong with this emergence of organized monotheism? Of course, our context here is Zoroastrianism, precisely because Zoroastrianism

has both an ancient face and a post-organized religion face. So what exactly did the wrong or not even wrong, what exactly happened? That that kind of mindset became entrenched. the kind of mindset that thinks that there is such a thing as a law that you can still be a good person in the ethical sense

If you are following the laws of organized religion, so on and so forth. All that kind of jams that comes usually organized monotheism. Usually we do aspire to Christianity, but that I would say is just because Christianity, We are living, the majority of us, we are living in a Christian world, and that's why we are predisposed to the vagaries of Christianity, but that I would say is completely universal all across the board of all monotheistic religions.

So, Daman, would you respond back and also tangentially, I don't need you to go full on, tangentially respond to some of these problems? I could certainly try, but I'm not sure if it's sufficient or appropriate, but... Don't worry, we are not going to cancel it if you say shit.

Sure. I don't know, maybe the whole idea of monotheism was the beginning of this downfall of the project of the world. Would you be able to say what is exactly what monotheism in that kind of time chronic context that makes it so abhorrent, so, you know, viral? I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but monotheism begins when the other idols or gods or this kind of stuff are abolished. So maybe that's the origin of having law in

in contrast to rule, which is arbitrary, which is revisable, which is lucid, not concrete and solid. Yes, but this is why I said that at that time, and I know that you posed a challenge. You see, for example, you can say, for example, the laws of Newton, right, utterly vanquished anything that came before it, even Galileo's laws of gravitation, even the early enlightenment.

But do you call it monotheistic? No. Simply because it vanquished every other alternative? No, I would call it universal. Then in what sense? Because in that time it was not containable in the pre-context of Newton. So in that sense, I would call it universal. Like, for example, Darwinism. I think you

impinged upon it in your seminar on the Luz Gautari. That Darwinism is in so far universal because it is uncontainable with regards to the other laws, to the other, yeah, to the other laws, if I understood it correctly. So here, okay, yes, that I completely agree with, but then here, imagine that as you have seen me That's as you have seen me on Twitter talking to people who still think that shamanism is a more respectable science than actual medicine, medical sciences.

And by the way, I fucking hate medical sciences. Who are doctors other than mechanic glorified mechanics just like pilots are glorified truck drivers. Regardless of that, there comes a certain moment when you have to say, okay, yes, you know, Newton did that, Kepler did that, so on and so forth. But then the real question that arises here is that how did they manage to do that? Why should we trust them other than some goddamn bare feet shamans who are dancing and have

a commune? I don't want to be as smart as here, but I think I could use your previous approach regarding tractability of the methods. I think that's what differentiates at the end of the day between the barefoot shaman and Newton, for example. But then those people would say that, you know, our methods are also tractable. It's just that your idea of tractability is not ours. You see, that kind of stuff can go a very long way.

To be honest with you, this is also why I think that I just simply don't want to talk about the definition of morality and ethics, science versus idiocy. Precisely because we are living in an age that every sort of claim that you can make ever can be harvested by idiocy. Then we should find new weapons. Against idiocy? Yes.

Literally, people who think that I'm going to say it, even if I'm going to get cancelled. a person who thinks that his girlfriend should go through shamanic practices, rather than medical practices, I would say is a goddamn murder. Not everything that can be, you see, the whole point of this idea of ethics wasn't supposed to be absolute, was not supposed to be

black and white as if, you know, if you do X, Y will yield. It's not a goddamn fucking logical formula, right, is a matter of practical reasoning. And with practical reasoning, there comes certain kinds of what you might call to be qualms and challenges and so on and so forth. But the fact that I see that people see the failure, the historical failure, precisely because it's a historical failure,

not an inevitable one. It's brought by the context in which we live. They see the historical failure of ethics, rationality and for that matter what you were saying as something that should lead us to adopt you know alternative ways such as goddamn shamanism organized religion and so on and so forth I really think that this is the moment that we as philosophers, we say, thank you.

You go on, I'm retired now. Let's see what kind of society you can make. And, but of course, I'm not that kind of person, you know. there is an Aryan blood in the Nazi sense, to make a joke about this, in my blood. I absolutely don't want to see that kind of society. Essentially, there is a fight and the fight should be taken with utmost seriousness. people who

there are people who want the fruits of science and not the methods and not the hardship goes into the scientific enterprise are absolutely under revolution on every side of the spectrum, whether you are on right or left. There is no such a thing as having a method that cannot be tractable. That would be just fucking goddamn Zoroastari and Erdavir Afnani. The problem of evil par excellence.

The problem of evil can only be solved by this idea that, yes, I don't have a free choice, I don't have this, I don't have that, I'm basically restricted to a certain kind of context, but nevertheless, the kind of choices that I do make And the methods through which I make such choices are tractable, such that they can be replicated by the collective. And if they cannot be replicated, and if they cannot lead to certain kind of revolutionary ideas, then absolutely they're bullshit. Sorry Reza, to interrupt you.

Fuck with individual experience. experience is just for a bunch of lackeys who are living in their own narcissistic basement, mom's basement. There is nothing about this to discuss anymore. And I am sick to tell people that no, your life experience doesn't matter as long as the life experience hasn't been brought up, cultivated and recognized by the collective. Anything else is just a piece of wankery.

By the way Reza, I was not suggesting shamanism. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I wasn't, I wasn't, absolutely, I wasn't, I wasn't talking about your thing. No, no, no, I was talking about the kind of people that might actually manipulate that kind of stuff without even you knowing it. Sure. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, zero gunshot coming your way. Don't worry, I have the same Aryan blood running through my wings.

I'm invincible to that. But it's just really, this is the whole point. that I would say that there is a certain kind of evil in the canonical monotheistic sense and there is also the problem of the good. Why do I call it problem of the good? Because it's a problem. It is not something that you can simply put your snouts on it and say that, Oh, I discovered the good. No, the good is a matter of discovery. The problem of evil is everything that is against the principle of discovery.

And hence, even in the most naive sense, you come across a certain kind of distinction between good and evil. The good is the compulsion, the tendency to inquire systematically. to turn every rock evil is the one that would say that yes, it is not actually

exactly against that kind of idea of the good. Evil, for the most part, if you look at it historically, this is actually Paul Ricker's idea, Jung included, it is not about that you are not going to discover or you don't have a certain kind of verb to discover, to see what the world is, so on and so forth. No. It is actually also an impulse to discover, to inquire, to question about the furniture of the world.

The only reason that it's evil is precisely because it doesn't give you the algorithm, the source code, and how it goes to acquire. And that's why it is evil. I'm not going to say this, but I'm going to say this for a Twitter joke. Any person who doesn't give you the algorithm of inquiry is most probably a goddamn evil person. algorithm here simply means revealing the means of inquiry into the matter was at hand

it has to be a learning algorithm right like a self-reforming self-reforming and also for that matter any sort of learning procedure should have certain kinds of mechanisms to get rid of learned biases. That's why we need heretics and revisionists. Yes. I have a suggestion for I don't know if next class or some some other class but since we have

been having a some room in in like the decisions about what we're doing I was just thinking that there's there's a friend from Brazil who's a big fan of Reza big reader and studies Reza's work. I don't know if, maybe you've actually read that, but he's written a small piece, like, interestingly, comparing Reza's thinking and intelligence and spirit with Grupo de Nun, which is chaos, magic, demonological... Are you familiar with JP Caron?

Yeah, yeah, it's one of his friends too. Yes, JP actually told me about this. Yes, okay, how about this? I'm not supposed to bring guests, but if you can manage to bring him so he can speak for like 30 minutes, 20 minutes. Yes. and he gets paid he gets paid uh and that would be great that would be great yeah yeah sure yeah absolutely we need we need we need a certain kind of you see the problem here is that i think we are living in a certain kinds of hyper delusion time

where there are too many multitudes, too many voices, and zero goddamn fucking plan. And if we are going to solve it, it's true simply hearing certain kinds of voices and not others. Well, obviously, any person who says that, oh, I'm going to be the multitude, listening to all voices, is most probably a white woman or a white man. I don't want that kind of a start. But I think that it's necessary to actually hear certain kinds of voices, particularly if they are anti-revolutionary, anti-rationality, so on and so forth.

the greatest ambition of a philosopher at this point is to convert enemies don't you think that turning dogein's daughter into a fundamental hegelian communist Isn't it cool? It is the ultimate idea of the cool. Ultimate contamination plan. Getting back to the root. It's just that I'm not interested in that shit. To be honest with you, I'm more interested simply to talk to my students as my friends, as my peers.

Carl knows that, you know that, some of you know that. It is, I think, the greatest thing that we can do. I have seen so many friends, so many good friends, who have tried to do that, to reach the alt-right, but they eventually fall. and that is just i don't i have no word for it it's it's sad they can now no longer be converted

so who is going to present a next session it would be a session about augustine and plotness is going to present. Should I try to bring Casio, which is the friend that I was talking about? Sure, absolutely. If you can imagine that that would be superb. Yes. I think he's been watching

the classes on YouTube. Did you say Casio? Yeah. I know Casio. Yes. Yeah, he's one of your close facts. I thought that you are Cassio, actually. Really? No, I'm a different person. Yes, yes, yes. Please bring any person who can contribute. So that would be it with regard to presentation. Reminding that the main point is about Augustine Plutin's idea of Christianity and evil, right? With regard to the problem of morality and ethics.

Then there would be also a response. Who is going to do the response? Show your face, cowards. But wasn't Augustine and Plutinus today? yeah in a very kind of yeah I read them for today no sorry yes I mean last session we were talking about war and stuff that's why we are kind of behind the schedule so he's going who's going to answer Who's going to present? Did we set the presenter yet? I think we are going to give the presentation opportunity to your friend Casio and someone

should volunteer to respond to him. Right? Okay, but then that's about, at least the way I was thinking about it was to talk about his small text about Reza and Grupo di Noon and maybe Grupo di Noon's Dermonological Manifesto and then he could present on that I think would be more useful like when he comes but maybe not next time maybe another one I don't know. no no no no i think i think that would be fantastic for next time but uh we need a respondent yeah someone someone say a name even if you have done it already because otherwise i have to use my dictatorial power

um i've already responded but if no one else wants to do it i can do it No, you are not going to respond. You're a goddamn another Casio Brazilian guy. Okay. No, it should be a different kind of guy, perhaps a Russian. Who is the Russian person? Asya? Well, I'm not Russian. That's the whole problem. Where are you from? I'm from Ukraine. So you just did the greatest- Well, you are part of the former Soviets. Yes. It still comes as Russian. I already presented. OK. Love you.

The problem solved. OK. That's it. So next time, I would like you to read and I never say this to my students but who the wants to read the entire Agostin's confession probably no one. So read a Stanford encyclopedia on the goddamn Agostin. You're the main point and comes back to me and then I will challenge you with certain

amounts of you know challenges of pollutants put forward before even Agustin wrote his confessions and then we will take it from there how about that But if you are so into reading Agustin's confessions, please be my guests. But is anyone presenting Agustin and responding to it? Or that doesn't really... Well, your friend is going to respond to that.

That's the whole point. Cassio Cassio is going to talk about Agustin I'm confused didn't you suggest Cassio yeah but I suggested that he talk about this other thing no absolutely not he's only going to talk about Agustin and hence he has to read god damn fucking Agustin So we are at the end of the session. One thing that I genuinely am interested to ask you, all of you,

is that in the aftermath of the COVID-19, in the aftermath of the riots, how do you see yourself living in a society? Are you comfortable with it? Do you want to do something extreme about it? Or do you simply want to do something systematic that is just boring, everyday stuff, with the hopeful understanding that it might actually, at some point,

does, in fact, trigger a change. You mean the boring stuff? Yeah, all of that. They're all boring, to be honest with you. I mean, isn't the COVID-19 the most boring pandemic that we have ever encountered? I mean, fine, I wanted some sort of plus plus black bubonic plague that completely eradicates humanity, it didn't happen unfortunately. And Alexey, you can turn off the recording.

Give me a second. Also, will we read Platinus or that's also? Yeah, with Platinus, you can read, one second. The Inuits? Sorry? The Inuits by Platinus will be? Yes, that's a good one. Yes, that's a good one. But I mean, obviously, when it comes to any sort of philosopher, you should understand there is a lot of text. So you always need to go for some sort of proxy minimized text.

I think that there is such a thing if you actually search no platonism plus plus plus ethics on Google. That's all we can come up with. So, how are these people? Carl, Carl is, I have noticed that he's one of the greatest people that I have known in

terms of rigor. But he's the epitome of all of my students, my good students, being the most cynical. And that's something should be cherished. So, Carl, please. What exactly am I meant to say? Anything about anything. Well, that's a tough challenge. like the question of the methodology

I know that you have quite a massive amount of reservation about those kinds of stuff well I mean the way I have reservation is simply that I think you have perhaps not specified enough what exactly you mean by a method and I think perhaps we are we're talking in a sort of in a register that is relatively abstract without grounding it in examples to an extent that makes it intelligible in a way that sort of makes it accessible for a way of sort of doing something and I think that is not necessarily a problem but I think in in this specific context it it

would be beneficial to have some kind of set of examples to try to hinge this conversation about method and science and on, simply because otherwise we risk sort of having these misunderstandings because, you know, the term method has such a vast range of meanings in in different scientific disciplines and what counts as a method is, and even sort of the entire sort of field of methodology is not by any means sort of clear by itself. So I think as per usual, I think what I'm wondering about is definitions and having very sort of clear definitions,

if not spoon-fed, at least sort of up on the table for up for debates that can be iterated upon and developed and talked about. Okay, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's a really good point. So I would say that, and that's why the question on method is usually shone the way in many, circles but how about this the most minimal sense of the word what Kant called quid juris by what right by what right you say something but what right you adopt this kind of method by what right you are

are presupposing such premises. Quid juris, I would say, but this is really tricky one, precisely because I know that quite a great deal of contents of philosophers, particularly who are now politically moving toward, you know, unconditional accelerations and so on and so forth. Don't believe in Kantian epistemological projects. But I would say that is the greatest project of all time. If you don't have it, maybe you shouldn't do philosophy.

By what right is the ultimate question. By what right do you use a Bayesian method or an interactionist logic method in thinking about a future artificial intelligence. More naively, by what method do you really think that this is red, this rose is red, as opposed to being green? You see, by what right?

By what right is the ultimate question of the philosophy? And this is why I actually hate content of philosophers at this point, for the most part. Because they cannot answer to this. They either cannot answer to this, or they say that it's just beside a point. No, the method is all we have. The tractability is what matters. So what happens when someone answers sort of by no right, that we do not have a right, essentially when sort of...

Then I would say that... then I would say that of course I will ask multiple questions but ultimately my question would be how do you say that there is something exists and can be thought or alternatively something can be thought and for which something can exist

outside of Menno's or Gorgia's paradox. Essentially I would equate these kinds of complaints, with the early skepticism, namely Gorgias and Menno as a student. Yeah, I personally think that's fair, as long as one takes those complaints seriously and response to them as such? Because I do think to some extent, these are quite legitimate complaints

that deserve a serious response. The organone of skepticism was one of the most respectable organones of philosophy. It was not against rationality. It was part of rationality. But something happened in the history of philosophy in which skepticism became against rationality. It became literally cynicism, not in the old way or ancient way that cynics were thinking

about, but in the modern sense. It is just that, you know, if you don't have certain kind of scenario, certain kind of method, then maybe you shouldn't talk about it. But I would say that this kind of cynicism, if understood correctly, with regard to rational methods, is all we have. In fact, it is all we ever have. It is the very pinnacle of the scientific method.

science, if not cynicism, with a robust method? So if there is such a point in the history of philosophy where the character of skepticism in some sense changes, where can we pinpoint that? And and is it perhaps beyond the point? I would say it's Hegel. Hegel is when. And I can send you, if you email me, I don't think that I have your email,

if you email me, arnegarstani56 at gmail.com, I will send you one of the greatest examples of how a skepticism becomes in the service of pure rationality in the dialectical practical sense I have a question about this tractability condition and maybe between possible distinction between the tractability and the production of knowledge and then tractability

in the practical ethics of the everyday. Because I feel like, you know, if there's this condition of tractability and for like practical like guidance of action and the art of how to live and so on, this would imply that there is a kind of condition of internal luminosity or like ability to completely be able to spell out those beliefs of acting. I feel like that wouldn't work in terms of like being able to actually guide people's action in the real kind of time, right? Like if this were our model, then that would kind of mean, you know, all action must be be pre-ordained in a sense, or pre-ratified by the rational normativity that it's accessing.

But this would produce a stasis with the norms in question. What is it that rationality should be thought as if it were certain kind of like, you know, adaptive system in naturalistic kind, where basically you make some inputs, certain kind of outputs do yield and then you simply make a principle out of that. But that's, I don't think that's what rationality means. Essentially rationalism is not a naturalistic kind. Rationalism

is not of a nature that doesn't make it supernatural. It just makes it something that is above the laws and how the laws of nature are being configured and regardless. Sure, but as a question of practical philosophy, how is it being accessed in a sense, right? And how is it therefore a guide to action? Or is this your point that it's not doing that or it's not supposed to do that? In an actualistic sense or in a rationalistic sense? Or in some sort of in between? I mean, so I'm taking like the purpose of this question of like, how do we construct

a self to be a matter of how do we align ourselves with this notion of like, you know, or how do we align ourselves with the rational normative account that like exists on a kind of, as a kind of intersubjective thing, right? So I mean, this is kind of what I mean. It's like, how does that avoid a kind of stasis, right? Like, how does that avoid, how does that get updated, in a sense, or how is that changing? Is it a matter of negotiation? But then what kind of produces the, like, what prompts that negotiation? No, no. it's not merely a matter of negotiation, I would say. Okay, negotiation is a kind of,

you can think about it in the colloquial sense, like as barter economy, right? Negotiate, you're giving me meat, I'm giving you diamonds, right? But there is also different kinds of negotiation, which you might call to be negotiation by virtue of our own constraints that we have created. But I'm not talking about any source of these negotiations. I would say that any source of stuff that we are making at this point with regard to

certain constraints are always going to be negotiated precisely because they are a constraint. My point is something different. Imagine that before your negotiation economy, you could do something sneaky, in the sense that you could actually change the factors of exchange in your economy like you see the point of exchange as Mark's weather and Max and

all of that shit we're bringing on is always at the end of the day if you don't have the clear method to support it, it's going to be capitalist. Exchange, by definition, doesn't make communists. So, how is communism being built? Knowing that we as humans, as monkeys, have to do certain kind of exchange, and so on and so forth. That's the problem.

So, this is the problem of communism. Do you simply want to get rid of the human idea for the sake of some sort of rudimentary exchange? No, probably not. Do you want to do this for other kinds of rudimentary ideas? Probably not. So ultimately the question bottoms out at this very concrete problem. What is that you want to actually do?

What Hegel calls concrete, practical problem. What is it really that you want to do? Do you want to talk to Black Lives Matter buddies of yours? Do you want to actually make friends with alt rights people, can't part, so to speak? Probably none of that.

So then the question becomes what Marx called, or Altuzer called, the problem of the method. The problem of method is the ultimate problem. You can't simply come up with a goal if you haven't created and rooted a certain kinds of mythological problem. A method that in the context of our own time, in the context our shitty time most probably actually works to a certain degree.

Yeah, I mean, I find that all, like, you know, very compelling and I agree, like, with this from a kind of, from a politically, from a political ethics point of view, I totally agree that these questions have to be approached methodologically. I think my question, and, you know, we don't have to like dwell on it, but I think my ongoing issue here is, you know, it has to do with the more kind of classic ethical questions in the sense of like, what does one do in a given situation, right? So, and I think, like, just to be more... That's a dangerous question, to be honest with you. Do you know why? Precisely because

it's something that was brought up by early ethicists, particularly by Noah Kantians. You see, yes, we can ask such questions, They are really good. They make us feel better. But imagine that you actually do bring up such questions with regard to this and that. but are they guarantees that something better can happen? You see, the relation between the methods and the ideal is fragile.

So, the fragility of which comes from the fact that we have never thought coherently about the relation between the idea and the method in a systematic way that includes both libidinal factors scientific factors so on so forth people usually want just one of them My true apologies if I come off as an asshole anti-revolutionary at this point.

Not at all. I mean, I'm just trying to align what I think I'm asking and also maybe whether we're talking at cross-purposes here, possibly, because, I mean, I think that... Yes, yes. That's the whole point. The whole point of revolutionary thinking is to be thinking across the purposes. Right? You know, there are certain kinds of purposes. Okay, I mean, this is like the one-on-one. Okay, you say that every person, every individual person has a life experience

by virtue of the life experience has certain kinds of proclivity, tendency, ethical or whatever fuck upbringing. Right? But then you realize that the very people who say something like that are probably not the kind of people who actually say that, oh, that's why universalism is important. Precisely because universalism is about integrating a diverse body,

people have diverse experiences. Essentially, they want to go back into some sort of micro-localism, wherein micro-localist experience is the most originalist, original experience. And you can see it today, among the left and among the right. But I think that there should be a different kind of paradigm where we understand that simply to create an individual response

is not a recipe for individualism. It is actually a recipe to see that to be individual might actually be brought up, created by something that we call collectivism. And what we call collectivism, months at the same point, can be brought by a multitude of individuals. So there is a dialectic between what is collective, what is unifying and what is splitting.

As long as you are not willing to look into these factors, the splitting and the unifying factors, then absolutely you are most probably on the side of idiocy, not alt-right and perhaps not alt-left. Yeah, I think this question of the factors themselves is maybe partly what I'm trying to get at. But yeah, I still, I mean, I think the big challenge for me in my head is like, take for example, the question of like, marital rape, right? And so there's a point where

it's like, you know, this kind of conceptual construction of marital rape is impossible. And so then somebody who is in the situation where marital rape is happening and they obviously have some kind of knowledge, yet that's not validated by the rational thing at the time. And so this idea of rationality is something that's revised and updated would presumably say, well, yes, this amount of rationality was accessible at T1 and then at T2, it's updated to include this kind of conceptual construction that marital rape is possible. And yeah, basically, it's all the same. It's all rationality in a sense, or it's all normativity.

I mean, if I understand it correctly, that would be the argument. It's like normativity hasn't changed. We've just kind of come to a better understanding of what it is. And I guess my question is like how yes yes absolutely absolutely it's just that normativity really means nothing the only normativity that actually we should pay attention to is a kind of normativity where we can actually do follow the link between premises and the consequences, follow the methods that

go into it. Essentially, it should be an explicitized, you know, a kind of public aspect of kind of normativity. Otherwise, normativity is just ... normativity, in that kind of sense that doesn't follow with these kinds of methods, is more like, you know, I milk my cow and I do go on and kill some people, Allah, Red Dead Redemption 2. And it's all normative.

I get the honor at the end of the day. Yes, you get. That's just shed normative. Normativity is all about the two questions. The question of practical reasoning and the question of epistemological reasoning. quit juries. By what right? By what right do you think that you can do this or you cannot do that? But my challenge to this is that like the by what right is already validated by the conceptual norm of that time, right? So... Well, yeah. Well, that's a different kind of thing. That's a fundamental different

kind of thing that's what you might call to be the capital the communist critique of capitalism idea of subsumption so yes it is an open question many of my friends who used to take side with that kind of commentarian real assumptions have already no longer no longer actually uh take side with this but yes there is the whole point that okay

for example you're thinking and reasoning in a certain kind of sense and this is all good in terms of normative laws and how you should carry the methods of the normative but what if that the very kind of method, the very kind of idea that you were using to conduct such experiment was already subsumed or assimilated by a greater system called capitalism.

that's the cornerstone of a thesis now as the real subsumption yeah i mean i i don't have more to add at this point but um yeah thank you for indulging that discussion. I'll think about it and come back to you. My total apologies for saying shits. No, it's really, really interesting and I'm keen to go away and just think about it a little bit before I keep going

down this road. Okay, my dear friends, I have to go to the garden. Reza, just a second before you go. Concerning this Casio for the next class, do you want me to talk to Mohamed and Catherine to start this whole process of bringing this guest? Would you be able to say it again? Concerning Casio, Zhe wanted to bring a guest for the next class. Do you want me to talk to the new center organizers? No, no.

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And that will be it. Until then, I don't want to hear about any of you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Reza. Take care. Thanks, Reza. Bye-bye. And take care. Bye. Love you, guys. Bye. Thank you.