The complete takeover of every aspect of society by administrative managerialism is a plague that afflicts us all. In every profession - policing, medicine, education, science, industry, journalism, the list goes on and on - professionals have been reduced to employees of impersonal bureaucracies, their decision-making power stripped away as they're forced by regulation to implement the algorithms designed by administrators who themselves frequently have no particularly notable or impressive experience within the field that they're managing.
The results have been a terrible malaise, negatively impacting the morale of professionals, as well as fostering a crisis of competence that has led directly to a collapse in confidence. All instinctively recognize that a professional who cannot use his own judgement, but must blindly enforce an algorithmic decision, cannot be trusted ... and indeed is not worthy of the trust and respect with which we know we should be able to invest in them. And the professionals know this, too.
I'd not previously considered that this could be yet another symptom of the left brain servant exceeding its proper station, but now that you point it out it makes perfect sense.
May 3, 2022·edited May 3, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
Reasoning is far more than a mere algorithm; and that identification is pernicious in the extreme.
And what happens when our most essential and core attribute - the capacity for reason, and therefore for free will - is eclipsed?
The protocolization & algorithmization of nearly everything until we have been thingified out of our humanity. (That's three made up words in one sentence.)
I can see why some people may think AI is the way to go. Maybe they can’t make decisions easily and don’t trust themselves , especially in life changing situations. Maybe they are overwhelmed by choices. I’m assuming AI programs list likely answers from most likely to least likely. If someone has a hard time choosing, that would be a plus. If you follow the program, it’s not your responsibility if the program is wrong, as we saw over the last couple of years. Maybe there are lots of lazy thinkers who have discovered the road to success is a computer algorithm. why work so hard and think so hard, when all you have to do is follow the program.
May 3, 2022·edited May 4, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
I am totally unqualified to make comments. I know very little about very little and don't like to read long comments from people like myself. However, I have been reading your and TGC's posts and have some thoughts regarding what I have been observing, not specific to the handling of the virus for the past two years.
My favorite saying from my father is, "attention is all that I can afford to pay." So, I attempt to pay attention.
Tara Couture (Slowdown Farmstead) consistently speaks about the importance of experiential life and the lack of attention to it in general, and even more importantly, in the past two years. Here is her latest offering:
Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko author) had my attention until he stated that regenerative/small farm/indigenous ways of growing will never solve the food production problems.
Douglas Murry had me until he stated in an interview on unherd, that "there are no other ways of knowing that have been proven to solve anything." To be fair, he is specifically talking about culture wars. He stated that finding cures for Alzheimer's, or solving any of the other health problems facing Western societies will never come from "other ways of knowing."
I see these as blind spots. I disagree with them and believe that these are left brain ways of thinking.
The essence of life itself is a non-linear process; witness the action of proteins within the cell, one of them alone has multiple functions dependent upon not just the messages it gets from other proteins and cofactors but upon the function of the cell itself, where it is located in the body or in the organs. There is an innate intelligence within that cannot be accounted for by mathematical equation or physical logic. In other words, there is a consciousness at work. The spiritual aspect of existence can be attempted to be ignored, but at the peril of the individual's meaning of existence, their very experience of life. The right and left need each other to have a full experience of life, but ultimately, the right provides the connection to what cannot be known without the 'knower', the miniscule fraction of time that holds the inspiration prior to the feeling, then the thought. The true 'experiencer' is that essence of a human being that is constant, above the throes of emotion and thought, that supports the physical expression of what truly 'is', that imbues those proteins with that innate intelligence.
May 3, 2022·edited May 3, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
I'm not sure if you seen this but we are stuck in this way of seeing things as linear cause and effect because of written language... (Which brings belief in history that is written on books, even if it was embellished)
I wonder if we were more ambidextrous in the past before all of this crap.
I thought it was the norm to be able to use either hand in precise tasks but later on in school learned that this is not so.
It's funny how the more we focus on "knowledge" acquisition, the less we discover. Perhaps this is because we need to put such knowledge onto a recordable medium, which takes away from the other aspects of the information?
Highly recommending McGilChrist’s lectures, many of which are found on YouTube. The first one I ever saw was “The Coincidence of Opposites.” McGilchrist is a rare treasure who is much-needed in this world of insanity currently underway. Great you are doing a series, Winston Smith.
May 4, 2022·edited May 4, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
31 years ago I was a single mother in Vancouver BC Canada. My son was difficult and the first time in my life I ended up on welfare (to stay only as long as absolutely needed I might add). Just around that time Hong Kong was reverting back to Chinese control from the UK. Some government officials thought it was a good idea to sell Vancouver to the Chinese who had money and basically it protected us from the global crash of 2008. Few know this story. Well, anyone who could sell out did sell out and moved further out of the City. Prices of real estate kept sky rocketing upward as the Asians had no shortage of cash to buy our city. Why did they have so much cash? Well, we stopped making our own stuff. We wanted more. We wanted cheaper. We closed down all the shops in favor of Big Brands. We were sold on, and bought the idea, that we needed all this crap. We sold out to Walmart. We did it to ourselves. Now the next generation of young people have no idea what happened. Do they care? Well only in as much as its so expensive to live in Vancouver. But no one really knows the story and no one really cares.
This similar situation has happened all over the west. Who is pushing real estate prices up everywhere? Who has the cash that we no longer have in the West? Simple answer. Asians.
Do you know that a Chinese company has bought a US Defence contractor. Does anyone care? No. As long as Facebook is operational and Twitter is operational and they can buy Tesla stock they don't care.
In order to escape Mass Psychosis people have to care about the future. But they don't and en mass they won't. So now what?
The complete takeover of every aspect of society by administrative managerialism is a plague that afflicts us all. In every profession - policing, medicine, education, science, industry, journalism, the list goes on and on - professionals have been reduced to employees of impersonal bureaucracies, their decision-making power stripped away as they're forced by regulation to implement the algorithms designed by administrators who themselves frequently have no particularly notable or impressive experience within the field that they're managing.
The results have been a terrible malaise, negatively impacting the morale of professionals, as well as fostering a crisis of competence that has led directly to a collapse in confidence. All instinctively recognize that a professional who cannot use his own judgement, but must blindly enforce an algorithmic decision, cannot be trusted ... and indeed is not worthy of the trust and respect with which we know we should be able to invest in them. And the professionals know this, too.
I'd not previously considered that this could be yet another symptom of the left brain servant exceeding its proper station, but now that you point it out it makes perfect sense.
Reasoning is far more than a mere algorithm; and that identification is pernicious in the extreme.
And what happens when our most essential and core attribute - the capacity for reason, and therefore for free will - is eclipsed?
The protocolization & algorithmization of nearly everything until we have been thingified out of our humanity. (That's three made up words in one sentence.)
I can see why some people may think AI is the way to go. Maybe they can’t make decisions easily and don’t trust themselves , especially in life changing situations. Maybe they are overwhelmed by choices. I’m assuming AI programs list likely answers from most likely to least likely. If someone has a hard time choosing, that would be a plus. If you follow the program, it’s not your responsibility if the program is wrong, as we saw over the last couple of years. Maybe there are lots of lazy thinkers who have discovered the road to success is a computer algorithm. why work so hard and think so hard, when all you have to do is follow the program.
I am totally unqualified to make comments. I know very little about very little and don't like to read long comments from people like myself. However, I have been reading your and TGC's posts and have some thoughts regarding what I have been observing, not specific to the handling of the virus for the past two years.
My favorite saying from my father is, "attention is all that I can afford to pay." So, I attempt to pay attention.
Tara Couture (Slowdown Farmstead) consistently speaks about the importance of experiential life and the lack of attention to it in general, and even more importantly, in the past two years. Here is her latest offering:
https://www.slowdownfarmstead.com/p/fortification-for-the-weary?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNDQ5NjkwNSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTMzMzYyNTMsIl8iOiJxd24vciIsImlhdCI6MTY1MTY3MTU5NiwiZXhwIjoxNjUxNjc1MTk2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNDg2MjM3Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.ZCICwexMqVogLO1mxl-jsBrSn3oV6GddKDvtFcuRYiw&s=r
Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko author) had my attention until he stated that regenerative/small farm/indigenous ways of growing will never solve the food production problems.
Douglas Murry had me until he stated in an interview on unherd, that "there are no other ways of knowing that have been proven to solve anything." To be fair, he is specifically talking about culture wars. He stated that finding cures for Alzheimer's, or solving any of the other health problems facing Western societies will never come from "other ways of knowing."
I see these as blind spots. I disagree with them and believe that these are left brain ways of thinking.
The essence of life itself is a non-linear process; witness the action of proteins within the cell, one of them alone has multiple functions dependent upon not just the messages it gets from other proteins and cofactors but upon the function of the cell itself, where it is located in the body or in the organs. There is an innate intelligence within that cannot be accounted for by mathematical equation or physical logic. In other words, there is a consciousness at work. The spiritual aspect of existence can be attempted to be ignored, but at the peril of the individual's meaning of existence, their very experience of life. The right and left need each other to have a full experience of life, but ultimately, the right provides the connection to what cannot be known without the 'knower', the miniscule fraction of time that holds the inspiration prior to the feeling, then the thought. The true 'experiencer' is that essence of a human being that is constant, above the throes of emotion and thought, that supports the physical expression of what truly 'is', that imbues those proteins with that innate intelligence.
I'm not sure if you seen this but we are stuck in this way of seeing things as linear cause and effect because of written language... (Which brings belief in history that is written on books, even if it was embellished)
https://robnitro.substack.com/p/alphabet-vs-the-goddess?s=w
I wonder if we were more ambidextrous in the past before all of this crap.
I thought it was the norm to be able to use either hand in precise tasks but later on in school learned that this is not so.
It's funny how the more we focus on "knowledge" acquisition, the less we discover. Perhaps this is because we need to put such knowledge onto a recordable medium, which takes away from the other aspects of the information?
Highly recommending McGilChrist’s lectures, many of which are found on YouTube. The first one I ever saw was “The Coincidence of Opposites.” McGilchrist is a rare treasure who is much-needed in this world of insanity currently underway. Great you are doing a series, Winston Smith.
31 years ago I was a single mother in Vancouver BC Canada. My son was difficult and the first time in my life I ended up on welfare (to stay only as long as absolutely needed I might add). Just around that time Hong Kong was reverting back to Chinese control from the UK. Some government officials thought it was a good idea to sell Vancouver to the Chinese who had money and basically it protected us from the global crash of 2008. Few know this story. Well, anyone who could sell out did sell out and moved further out of the City. Prices of real estate kept sky rocketing upward as the Asians had no shortage of cash to buy our city. Why did they have so much cash? Well, we stopped making our own stuff. We wanted more. We wanted cheaper. We closed down all the shops in favor of Big Brands. We were sold on, and bought the idea, that we needed all this crap. We sold out to Walmart. We did it to ourselves. Now the next generation of young people have no idea what happened. Do they care? Well only in as much as its so expensive to live in Vancouver. But no one really knows the story and no one really cares.
This similar situation has happened all over the west. Who is pushing real estate prices up everywhere? Who has the cash that we no longer have in the West? Simple answer. Asians.
Do you know that a Chinese company has bought a US Defence contractor. Does anyone care? No. As long as Facebook is operational and Twitter is operational and they can buy Tesla stock they don't care.
In order to escape Mass Psychosis people have to care about the future. But they don't and en mass they won't. So now what?
In a few years we will have an entire generation whose brains were programmed by cell phones from infancy. Someone should start the study now.