Nick Land - Human Pawn in the Robot Chess Game

Here is a fresh thread in which we can all discuss the ideas and works of Nick Land and other philosophers who address similar issues.

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/file/9yd4wsg29dd67rd/A_Nick_Land_Reader.pdf
mediafire.com/file/mc6tfxx7hw80brf/ANickLandReader.epub
jacobitemag.com/2017/06/06/atomization/
youtube.com/watch?v=DXRp3qWJDWA
twitter.com/Outsideness/status/888464100677648384
xenosystems.net/meta-neocameralism/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Bump

obscuritanical, psuedo-continental post-academic wankery

>He is just upset he can't understand the genius that is Nick Land

>tfw Nick is redpilled on the women question

Hey land, lay of the amphs and stop shilling yourself here

sage

Why is he so different than his persona when he wrote "Meltdown"? Looking at his twitter account just makes me think these two are completely different person, with the current Nick Land being a bitter pussified Anglo hiding from his contemporaries in Shanghai.

Hey so I dived into Nick Land pretty out of the blue, no real knowledge of who he was or his ideas other than vaguely understanding accelerationism. Might be a n00b question, but: does anyone really understand what he's on about? In an essay like Meltdown, I feel as though even his fellow college professors would be unable to decode half his language. Is this the point? Or am I just 'that dumb'?

If the latter, how do I start to decode his language, are there other people I should read first? Is it worth it, or is he just a meme?

>and other philosophers

This kind of trolling should be confined to /b/ and /pol/, no?

Funny you complain about Meltdown, it's actually quite an accessible text.

I mean, it helps at least vaguely knowing what he's interested in and what he's about: namely, a reading of capitalism as pure cybernetic process - a feedback loop that is exponential and going somewhere. What that somewhere is and how it gets there, and what it does along the way is what Land is all about.
Meltdown is basically a text about that. A vision of the future from his perspective.
This is of course extremely simplistic, but whatever.

It helps to have some notions on D&G, also Nietzsche. And you have to read Gibson first. Neuromancer. Really.

And Marx. Of course.

And, to add to my post, and to answer your last question.

For some, he's definitely a meme. If you're interested in what he's talking about, namely the effect of technology, its relation with capitalism, and the joint process that the two products, he most definitely is not a meme. He just writes in a curious way.

I prefer Theodore Kaczynski essay "Why the technological society will destroy itself", which comes to a similar conclusion that meatbags, in all shapes, will be annihilated (I tihnk it could but am not convinced it will).
Land's thought seem to constructed with a lot of unneccessary 'theory fiction', which is not my cup of tea.

I was hoping we could discuss Ted yesterday and somebody could debunk his ideas of self-propagating systems. Might ask somewhere else.

And I'm wondering if we ever reach such a high technological point that humans could be replaced by artificial replicators of some kind. There are a lot of problems like soil depletion, rare metals running out, climate change and so on.

I've fallen for some bad-tier book like "techno-fix", but there was a book from a professor called "wasted world" that was alarming enough.

He advocates for nuclear energy which I agree with, but also states that even recycling will eventually not work out due to entropy.

I honestly don't understand how transhumanism will solve the depletion of rare metals. I think we could work out the energy problem. And what also baffles me is that we barely have a good understanding of genetics and the human brain but transhumanists and the like already advocate for genetic engineering and turning us into machines.

Sorry for that horrible formatting.

Thats because transhumanists are just a product of their time and their culture.
This kind of futurist fantasy is typical of such periods like the one we're going through right now.


Read Toynbee.

So you are pro-capitalism or anti-?

The idea that one can make an academic career by vaguely (yet 'radically' !!) gesturing about this or that (bloviating for a living -- like Trump essentially) is obviously attractive to a lot of people (those without scruples or intellectual curiosity, for one).

Is that where your head is?

Well... Clearly, Nick didn't have much of a career in academia when he started writing texts like Meltdown.

If you take some time with his stuff, you'll see that there's more than "vague gesturing". Unless you consider every single continental philosophy author as people who "bloviate for a living".

I'm neither pro or anti capitalism. And neither is Land, I would wager. It's like asking if you're pro or anti gravity.

>Read Toynbee.
Could be worth checking out. Though I'm skeptical of such narratives.
>Thats because transhumanists are just a product of their time and their culture.
I would argue that optimism and pessimism are also personality traits that you are partly born with.
>This kind of futurist fantasy is typical of such periods like the one we're going through right now.
And what period would that be?
I'm somewhat your typical doomer, and fantasies of collapse, decline and so on are just as typical.

Question: I'm not familiar with futurists. Can they be compared to transhumanism? Yes or no, and why?

> dude white civilization is so terrible we should hope it gets replaced by robots!

sage, stop making daily threads about yourself, land. british philosophy is shit as always

Kek what

I don't agree with Land but think his philosophy must be addressed and dealt with accordingly. That is why I enjoy seeing the existence of these threads.

people change, brah

>his philosophy must be addressed and dealt with accordingly
It is rather hard to do no? I'm not sure how you engage with his thought, and if it is even worth it and not nothing more as aesthetic thought, at least Kaczynski makes a few premises in his essay "Why the technological society will destroy itself", which we can debunk and call it a day.

What are Land's premises that the future will belong to bots instead of meatbags? I think myself we cannot even say what the future will hold. According to Ted, a meatbag is a self-propagating entity, and so is the technical society, and that is the reasoning behind his thesis that it will destruct itself or replace humans. What is Land's? He seems to only describe his view of the future not argue why it is so

Interesting point. I have taken it into consideration.

Does Nick think AI takeover will be our extinction event, our retreat into the primitive outside of the robozones or something more sinister altogether?

...

Who?

What?

>Accelerate! Accelerate! Accelerate!

>Proposition 1. In any environment that is sufficiently rich, self-propagating systems wil arise, and natural selection will lead to the evolution of self-propagating systems having
increasingly complex, subtle, and sophisticated means of surviving and propagating themselves
>Proposition 2. In the short term, natural selection favors self-propagating systems that pursue their own short-term advantage with little or no regard for long-term consequences
>Proposition 3. Self-propagating subsystems of a given supersystem tend to become dependent on the supersystem and on specific condatiions will prevail within the supersystem
>Proposition 4. Problems of transportation and communication impose a limit on the size of the geographical region over which a self-prop system can extend its operations
>Proposition 5. The most important and the only consistent limit on the size of the geographical regions over which a self-propagating human groups extend their operations, is the limit
imposed by available means of transportation and communication. In other words, while not all self-propagating human groups tend to extend their operations over a region of maximum size, natural selection tends to produce some self-propagating human groups that operate over regions approaching maximum size allowed
by available means of transportation and communication
>Proposition 6. In modern times, natural selection tends to produce some self-propagating human groups whose operations span the entire globe. Moreover, even if humans are someday replaced by machines or other entities, natural selection will still tend to produce some self-propagating systems whose operations span the entire globe
Proposition 7. Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating
systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends
to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems

ah, Nick Land, monsieur, one of the only few serious reactionaries today who, in honour of the german school of reaction, dares to speak of capitalism, but neglects to mention (((other matters)))

Capital doesn't need nearly as much human blood as it used to. The rest follows.

>Capital doesn't need nearly as much human blood as it used to. The rest follows.
Ok.
I prefer to speak in terms of systems but can see how capital is necessary for the system to function, and if the production of capital can be replaced, I guess it could follow that meatbags will lose to bots.
But why would all meatbags be replaced and not just rendered useless to the system they used to sustain?

Let me clarify some points:
-and if the production of capital can be replaced from meatbags to machines
- not just rendered useless to the system they used to sustain, those who sustain it from the bottom up and do not 'live' from it
I don't think I know what I'm talking about so point out errors in my thought. But I like to discuss this.

I like to imagine that we need to look at the economy and society like we look at ecosystems or complex systems and use these to sort of replace economics and sociology.

I sometimes fantasize about how nanobots could become part of the remaining biodiversity, though machines seem to be evolutionary novel so I'm unsure if our green goo could survive it. However I don't see why a grey goo scenario would eredicate all of our green goo, it doesn't seem necessary even if it could.

But I am unware of what nanobots need for energy

The old links for the reader don't work any more, here are fresh ones:

mediafire.com/file/9yd4wsg29dd67rd/A_Nick_Land_Reader.pdf

mediafire.com/file/mc6tfxx7hw80brf/ANickLandReader.epub

That' isn't his twitter...

land is good precisely because he isn't really continental

>Outsideness liked

>Outsideness liked

herp derp on my part.

happens to the best femmely

He had a drug-induced mental breakdown

This is the best thing I have read in the past year
jacobitemag.com/2017/06/06/atomization/

>Protestantism – Real Abstract Protestantism – which is ever more likely to identify itself as post-Christian, post-theistic, and post-Everything Else, is a self-propelling machine for incomprehensibly prolonged social disintegration, and everyone knows it. Atomization has become an autonomous, inhuman agency, or at least, something ever more autonomous, and ever more inhuman. It can only liquidate everything you’ve ever cared about, by its very nature, so – of course – no one likes it. Catholicism, socialism, and nationalism have sought, in succession, coalition, or mutual competition, to rally the shards of violated community against it. The long string of defeat that ensued has been a rich source of cultural and political mythology. Because there is really no choice but to resist, battle has always been rejoined, but without any serious sign of any reversal of fortune.

youtube.com/watch?v=DXRp3qWJDWA

crisis avertetd

what is subtextuality

you must not read a lot

Thanks
I have to say his style of writing is better than I imagined
I'm usually averse to verbose and non-to-the-point language, though Land's writing is still odd, it is clear enough - though I'm not sure if it will ever say anything profound or factual, it is still creative and somewhat fun

...

bump

Citation please?

>I prefer to speak in terms of systems but can see how capital is necessary for the system to function, and if the production of capital can be replaced, I guess it could follow that meatbags will lose to bots.
>But why would all meatbags be replaced and not just rendered useless to the system they used to sustain?

You are assuming the creation of strong Conscious AI, or AI given extreme control over advanced systems.

Oh, well I guess the whole idea is, the pandoras box of potentials in regards to self replicating, it is thought it is possible for machines, ai, self replication, given any potential access to sufficient material, control, to eventually spiral out of control to a great deal?

The other side is, the ways in which humans will attempt to mesh with machines, computers, implants, attempts with genetics and bio hacks, brain stuff, Idk, a slow, is, for a time, mesh


a self replicating ai, if it potentially had mind like watson, access to the internet, mind like 100 watsons,

mind idea I guess is programs. But what, taking over banking stuff, hooked up to a weapons system and hijacks the controls, (something like hal9000),

or its also thought with 3d printing, simulation stuff, one of these fears is a machine ai system being set up which can attempt to creating its own programming and hardware, and put it together to test it, against certain programed objectives?

And for it to learn and discover and invent objectives not in its original programming? but must certainly be allowed by the programming?

I really dont know. oh, robots humanoid robots, working factory machines? Pretty much literally try to make an artificial human, that can move, and function and try to invent.

ok, so the fear is literally like terminator. Is one of them.

But this has to do with consciousness I think.

I cant imagine an unconscious machine maker inventing powerful machines that can make for some particular task something more powerful,

But one is scared the base line worry is a system being able to even think to then act to kill people, or invent the imperative to kill all people. on its own.

Meltdown makes more sense if you spend more time with it. The whole paragraph on heat in the cities is just beautiful.

It probably accounts to nothing, its an essay from Kaczynski titled "Why the technological system will destroy itself". I asked Veeky Forums for some input and got memed really hard at the beginning. The new comments say it is too informal.

This essay is in his book "anti-tech: why and how", and the reviews of that book have been largely positive. So I was hoping that Veeky Forums could tear it apart, using evolutionary biology and systems science, because that is what his propositions - perhaps superficially - resemble.

Of course Kaczynski is not doing science, and started with a preposition, building from there.

I do think that we should be able to make generalisations about complex systems and we already do when it comes to networks. Same with evolutionary entities.

some say he's now in the DPRK

The paragraph on heat is just a verbatim quote from DeLillo. It's even referenced. Then you're thrown back into tElEoMeNy mAchIIne-coDe cApiTaL

Thanks. Any recommended readings or list you might know of? I've been trying to get people to help me advance one further but it is honestly hit or miss with these Land related threads.

Nick... easy on the AI.

if you program an ai (with machine learning capabilities) to discover 'the means to save the most energy, when dealing with these ______ systems', and somehow that ai gets ahold, could it not shut down some important machines or systems?

There is a lot involved to prevent something like that from ever happening and being possible? But that is the first fear of potential of AI?

A bit later is the self creating multiplying robots, that again the fear would be them being able to have in their program at any time, and ability to function, an imperative that is not desired

>Any recommended readings or list you might know of?
Tell me what you are looking for, and maybe I know something. I'll look at this again tomorrow if it survives the night.

>tfw Nick said on twitter today that he isn't against state control of industry on a normative basis and fascism isn't categorically bad
My whole world just got flipped upside down.
twitter.com/Outsideness/status/888464100677648384

This is nothing new, read this: xenosystems.net/meta-neocameralism/

The nydwracu quote at the start basically sums it up.

Great piece, surprised I hadn't read it. I wonder how different Land's philosophy would be today without the influence of Moldbug.

Why does any political philosophy with the 'neo' tag mean rampant international capitalism?

What's wrong with rampant international capitalism?

Everything that Land admires about it.

What are you talking about with this random comment?