Where this sort of idea falls down, is that the Mass Man is an imbecile who has no interest whatsoever in epistemology, and no interest whatsoever in working out what's actually causing the shadows on the wall of the Cave.
For the Mass Man, 'the news' is just a thing that a vaguely-fuckable bleached-teeth dyed blonde reads off an autocue: it's entertainment, not information. It's designed to reinforce a specific weltanschauung - that the best use of a person's time is to participate in the Ant Farm, having half one's productivity transferred upwards to a clique of megalomaniacal sociopaths.
The Ancients understood this (after a fashion) with the strong distinction between _doxa_ and _epistēmē_ ... with doxa being the retarded red-headed stepchild of the cognitive family tree, and (sadly) being where the vast majority of people spend their intellectual lives. (One of the things that makes doxa easy, is that there is no *veridicality requirement*: there is no logical violation involved in believing a thing that is known not to be true).
Epistēmē is a slightly unnatural objective, because it requires an inherent mistrust of one's lyin' eyes (and senses generally) while still relying on the senses to eventually work out where the lies are. It is entirely predicated on a desire to move from belief to knowledge.
Askēsis - [the] discipline/practice/exercise that helps get there - is a process for which the VAST majority of human beings are simply not equipped, but it is the sine qua non for any attempt to live a fact-based life.
It is not enough to say "This is a human. Humans invented all this cool shit, so this one must be equally-capable with the ones who did the inventing... or at least within acceptably-small-δ" - because for an arbitrarily selected individual it's demonstrably, objectively not true.
Prediction-market-based reputation pricing is like the old saw about academic tenure (those who deserve it don't need it; those who need it don't deserve it) - amended such that those who are cognitively capable of navigating such a system, have other, better ways to inform themselves than 'hot takes' on YouTwitFace (a nifty term I stole - a composite of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook).
HOI PLEISTOI ANTHROPOI KAKOI. Most people are shit... so it's no surprise that groupwise they produce cacophony ("shit noise").
Kakoi and kakkao are etymologically related, so if you ever see 'cac-' (or "kak-") as a prefix, just replace it with 'shit[ty]' and you'll not be far from the mark... e.g., kakistocracy - rule by shit.
I met a girl called Alithea once, in a bar. She lied about her age.
I like that idea. It would be nice to see Substack set up a similar sort of market for tracking purposes, though that is probably too far afield from their mission.
The only real concern I have is the resolution of prediction markets. Too often they rely on "official" sources to declare wins/losses, which means using them to cut through official propaganda can be a real problem. If there is a market about whether or not China stays below 100,000 COVID deaths by 2023, and China says "Nope, no more deaths here, still at 5k!" that tells you nothing about how well someone judges and predicts reality. I don't really know how you get around that issue, but it worries me a good bit.
The problem of trust is insoluble. Our species evolved to live in very small bands, bound together by genomic affinity and constant interaction and dependence. Our neurocognitive and psycho-affective systems cannot have changed that much in the last few thousands of years of civilization.
Trust (which relies on observed dependability and mutual loyalty) on any scale is always going to be problematic. Civilized man tries to solve things through fantasies about shared values, common ancestry and abstract procedures but after a while it always erodes.
Possibly the closest that industrial society comes to creating high-trust environments are in the military (the platoon is a parody of a mannerbund, parodic because it is never autonomous) but it is clear that genuine and sustainable trust and mutual loyalty are impossible in any mass society, especially ones as transactional and utilitarian as those of the West.
There is no technical or procedural resolution to the problem, but mechanisms for transparency and accountability can mitigate things to a degree. Social networking technology would indeed be vastly useful in demystifying the way the oligarchs and their immediate subordinate strata actually function, especially if it could be integrated with good forensic accounting. We, the people, are already tracked. One day the hunter may become the game. One can only hope.
Excellent suggestion. Enhanced accountability is essential, but the powers that be will move heaven and earth to prevent any progress with that one. Daylight for vampires. In any case, the reality behind politics is always concealed: the experts are just hired to front the regime and read from a script. Politics is infotainment and the neocons (like their rivals) are only there to misdirect the attention of the audience.
The US invasion of Iraq by Bush 2 was not motivated by ideology or a miscalculation over WMD. It was an effect of the weakening of US power. The sanctions regime imposed on Iraq at the end of Gulf War 1 was collapsing thanks to French, German, Turkish, Chinese and Russian sanctions-busting. By the time of 9/11 the US was facing the prospect of being exposed as a paper tiger.
Worst still, Saddam was making noises about shifting Iraqi oil payments away from the dollar. You cannot underestimate the significance of this.
In the 1920s the Iraqi government responded to the UK moving from the gold standard to fiat currency by insisting on payments in monetary gold (bullion or coins). The UK (faced with either paying up or going to war against Baghdad) chose to fold and returned to the gold standard.
This episode is pointedly ignored in the history books because it was so embarrassing for the UK…the first time London was decisively weaker than an imperial client-state. It was a geopolitical inflection point on par with Munich or the fall of Singapore. Saddam was simply playing the same card and Washington chose war.
As for Russia, the Cold War formally ended at the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Malta. The unacknowledged covert economic war and the military rivalry by the US against Russia never paused for breath.
The decision to take over the Ukraine in 2014 and develop it for NATO was taken in response to the progress Russia had made with hypersonic missiles and the success of the reformed and much improved Russian Army in Chechnya and South Ossetia. The US Air Force also coveted the Crimea, which can be used to project air-power deep into Central Asia.
The Pentagon needs strategic nukes as close as possible to Moscow because this is the only card they can play to counter superior Russian missile technology. The intrusion of US submarines into Russian waters (a year or so one sailed into the Bay of Peter the Great where the Russian Pacific Fleet is based) and the flight of US long range bombers along the Russian border is further proof of just how keen the Pentagon is to test the Kremlin.
The neocon nonsense about Putin, autocracy, aggression is all just misdirection to conceal the real issues: US military hegemony and the ultimate goal of securing Russian energy and mineral resources (Siberia and the Arctic) for the advantage of the US oligarchy.
May 26, 2022·edited May 26, 2022Liked by John Carter
This is a very provocative article, John. I mean that in the best sense of the word, but I have some doubts. I guess my biggest problem lies with who takes and collects the bets, and by what criteria the winners are judged. (Speaking as a past boxing gsmbler, who always had to factor extreme externalities into s bet).
My concern would be accuracy of such prediction efforts. Numerous analysts predict stock prices, and election outcomes, and are all over the map. As Yogi Berra said, predictions are hard. I would also worry about susceptibility of fraud. Computed predictions can be adjusted by the programmer. But they're right that that such tools can be powerful. The most ludicrous outcomes can be made to appear by careful marketing toward those responsible for the outcome. If they believe it will happen, they'll make it happen. As Tom Peters said, perception is all there is.
This is nice in theory but as others have already observed the limitations of political divisions so deeply entrenched in determining the correct outcome of indeterminate events shaded by ideologies and trifling quarrels leaves canyon wide gaps for contestation. Blockchains inability to erase both user and content they create poses huge problems for privacy and the right to be digitally forgotten, erased from existence. A self amending Blockchain that can maintain value and ledger accuracy in the form of a two layered DAG (one for content value creation another for token value distribution) is the best solution to the rot of present attention networks. It could be decentralized and autonomous and powered globally by users instead of Google or Amazon who would quickly shut it down. It needs to be self amending. Users could pay with tokens to permanently delete or alter content or delete their node altogether. The best solution to this social dilemma is a mass exodus from censorious platforms littered with blue check bugmen but even conservatives who have been on the losing end of this charade refuse to leave for financial reasons. Having built a following needed to amplify their performances for financial gain "get 10% off my magic pillow with code blowme" these greedy cretins would rather cash in than show principaled solidarity with their censored and black listed brethren. The second best solution is media literacy which is growing exponentially with the corporate state lies and propaganda. Networks are failing. The corporate press is mocked and derided. People are becoming media literate and awakened. I do appreciate all new creative solutions on this dilemma. Every proposal has something to add and consider. Engineering accuracy and rewarding prescience is most definitely a piece of this puzzle worth considering, if it can be judiciously realized.
Where this sort of idea falls down, is that the Mass Man is an imbecile who has no interest whatsoever in epistemology, and no interest whatsoever in working out what's actually causing the shadows on the wall of the Cave.
For the Mass Man, 'the news' is just a thing that a vaguely-fuckable bleached-teeth dyed blonde reads off an autocue: it's entertainment, not information. It's designed to reinforce a specific weltanschauung - that the best use of a person's time is to participate in the Ant Farm, having half one's productivity transferred upwards to a clique of megalomaniacal sociopaths.
The Ancients understood this (after a fashion) with the strong distinction between _doxa_ and _epistēmē_ ... with doxa being the retarded red-headed stepchild of the cognitive family tree, and (sadly) being where the vast majority of people spend their intellectual lives. (One of the things that makes doxa easy, is that there is no *veridicality requirement*: there is no logical violation involved in believing a thing that is known not to be true).
Epistēmē is a slightly unnatural objective, because it requires an inherent mistrust of one's lyin' eyes (and senses generally) while still relying on the senses to eventually work out where the lies are. It is entirely predicated on a desire to move from belief to knowledge.
Askēsis - [the] discipline/practice/exercise that helps get there - is a process for which the VAST majority of human beings are simply not equipped, but it is the sine qua non for any attempt to live a fact-based life.
It is not enough to say "This is a human. Humans invented all this cool shit, so this one must be equally-capable with the ones who did the inventing... or at least within acceptably-small-δ" - because for an arbitrarily selected individual it's demonstrably, objectively not true.
Prediction-market-based reputation pricing is like the old saw about academic tenure (those who deserve it don't need it; those who need it don't deserve it) - amended such that those who are cognitively capable of navigating such a system, have other, better ways to inform themselves than 'hot takes' on YouTwitFace (a nifty term I stole - a composite of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook).
HOI PLEISTOI ANTHROPOI KAKOI. Most people are shit... so it's no surprise that groupwise they produce cacophony ("shit noise").
Kakoi and kakkao are etymologically related, so if you ever see 'cac-' (or "kak-") as a prefix, just replace it with 'shit[ty]' and you'll not be far from the mark... e.g., kakistocracy - rule by shit.
I met a girl called Alithea once, in a bar. She lied about her age.
I like that idea. It would be nice to see Substack set up a similar sort of market for tracking purposes, though that is probably too far afield from their mission.
The only real concern I have is the resolution of prediction markets. Too often they rely on "official" sources to declare wins/losses, which means using them to cut through official propaganda can be a real problem. If there is a market about whether or not China stays below 100,000 COVID deaths by 2023, and China says "Nope, no more deaths here, still at 5k!" that tells you nothing about how well someone judges and predicts reality. I don't really know how you get around that issue, but it worries me a good bit.
The problem of trust is insoluble. Our species evolved to live in very small bands, bound together by genomic affinity and constant interaction and dependence. Our neurocognitive and psycho-affective systems cannot have changed that much in the last few thousands of years of civilization.
Trust (which relies on observed dependability and mutual loyalty) on any scale is always going to be problematic. Civilized man tries to solve things through fantasies about shared values, common ancestry and abstract procedures but after a while it always erodes.
Possibly the closest that industrial society comes to creating high-trust environments are in the military (the platoon is a parody of a mannerbund, parodic because it is never autonomous) but it is clear that genuine and sustainable trust and mutual loyalty are impossible in any mass society, especially ones as transactional and utilitarian as those of the West.
There is no technical or procedural resolution to the problem, but mechanisms for transparency and accountability can mitigate things to a degree. Social networking technology would indeed be vastly useful in demystifying the way the oligarchs and their immediate subordinate strata actually function, especially if it could be integrated with good forensic accounting. We, the people, are already tracked. One day the hunter may become the game. One can only hope.
Excellent suggestion. Enhanced accountability is essential, but the powers that be will move heaven and earth to prevent any progress with that one. Daylight for vampires. In any case, the reality behind politics is always concealed: the experts are just hired to front the regime and read from a script. Politics is infotainment and the neocons (like their rivals) are only there to misdirect the attention of the audience.
The US invasion of Iraq by Bush 2 was not motivated by ideology or a miscalculation over WMD. It was an effect of the weakening of US power. The sanctions regime imposed on Iraq at the end of Gulf War 1 was collapsing thanks to French, German, Turkish, Chinese and Russian sanctions-busting. By the time of 9/11 the US was facing the prospect of being exposed as a paper tiger.
Worst still, Saddam was making noises about shifting Iraqi oil payments away from the dollar. You cannot underestimate the significance of this.
In the 1920s the Iraqi government responded to the UK moving from the gold standard to fiat currency by insisting on payments in monetary gold (bullion or coins). The UK (faced with either paying up or going to war against Baghdad) chose to fold and returned to the gold standard.
This episode is pointedly ignored in the history books because it was so embarrassing for the UK…the first time London was decisively weaker than an imperial client-state. It was a geopolitical inflection point on par with Munich or the fall of Singapore. Saddam was simply playing the same card and Washington chose war.
As for Russia, the Cold War formally ended at the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Malta. The unacknowledged covert economic war and the military rivalry by the US against Russia never paused for breath.
The decision to take over the Ukraine in 2014 and develop it for NATO was taken in response to the progress Russia had made with hypersonic missiles and the success of the reformed and much improved Russian Army in Chechnya and South Ossetia. The US Air Force also coveted the Crimea, which can be used to project air-power deep into Central Asia.
The Pentagon needs strategic nukes as close as possible to Moscow because this is the only card they can play to counter superior Russian missile technology. The intrusion of US submarines into Russian waters (a year or so one sailed into the Bay of Peter the Great where the Russian Pacific Fleet is based) and the flight of US long range bombers along the Russian border is further proof of just how keen the Pentagon is to test the Kremlin.
The neocon nonsense about Putin, autocracy, aggression is all just misdirection to conceal the real issues: US military hegemony and the ultimate goal of securing Russian energy and mineral resources (Siberia and the Arctic) for the advantage of the US oligarchy.
This system would certainly direct a lot more attention to people like Chris Martenson and Robert Barnes.
This is a very provocative article, John. I mean that in the best sense of the word, but I have some doubts. I guess my biggest problem lies with who takes and collects the bets, and by what criteria the winners are judged. (Speaking as a past boxing gsmbler, who always had to factor extreme externalities into s bet).
My concern would be accuracy of such prediction efforts. Numerous analysts predict stock prices, and election outcomes, and are all over the map. As Yogi Berra said, predictions are hard. I would also worry about susceptibility of fraud. Computed predictions can be adjusted by the programmer. But they're right that that such tools can be powerful. The most ludicrous outcomes can be made to appear by careful marketing toward those responsible for the outcome. If they believe it will happen, they'll make it happen. As Tom Peters said, perception is all there is.
This is nice in theory but as others have already observed the limitations of political divisions so deeply entrenched in determining the correct outcome of indeterminate events shaded by ideologies and trifling quarrels leaves canyon wide gaps for contestation. Blockchains inability to erase both user and content they create poses huge problems for privacy and the right to be digitally forgotten, erased from existence. A self amending Blockchain that can maintain value and ledger accuracy in the form of a two layered DAG (one for content value creation another for token value distribution) is the best solution to the rot of present attention networks. It could be decentralized and autonomous and powered globally by users instead of Google or Amazon who would quickly shut it down. It needs to be self amending. Users could pay with tokens to permanently delete or alter content or delete their node altogether. The best solution to this social dilemma is a mass exodus from censorious platforms littered with blue check bugmen but even conservatives who have been on the losing end of this charade refuse to leave for financial reasons. Having built a following needed to amplify their performances for financial gain "get 10% off my magic pillow with code blowme" these greedy cretins would rather cash in than show principaled solidarity with their censored and black listed brethren. The second best solution is media literacy which is growing exponentially with the corporate state lies and propaganda. Networks are failing. The corporate press is mocked and derided. People are becoming media literate and awakened. I do appreciate all new creative solutions on this dilemma. Every proposal has something to add and consider. Engineering accuracy and rewarding prescience is most definitely a piece of this puzzle worth considering, if it can be judiciously realized.