A quasi-scientific polemic.
Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend (b.1924, d.1994), having studied science at theUniversity of Vienna, moved into philosophy for his doctoral thesis,made a name for himself both as an expositor and (later) as a critic ofKarl Popper's “critical rationalism”, and went on to becomeone of the twentieth century's most famous philosophers of science. Animaginative maverick, he became a critic of philosophy of scienceitself, particularly of “rationalist” attempts to lay downor discover rules of scientific method.
Marc Andreessen as Avatar for Societal Decay
How one venture capitalist represents everything wrong with social media
We speak often of AI as if it were a future event. But it is already here in the fabric of our being. What Karl Ove Knausgaard captures with devastating clarity in his recent essay ‘The Reenchanted… | Kenneth Mikkelsen | 19 comments
We speak often of AI as if it were a future event. But it is already here in the fabric of our being. What Karl Ove Knausgaard captures with devastating clarity in his recent essay ‘The Reenchanted World’ is the departure of the real. “We live in a virtual world, as if the world had been lifted out of itself, into the air, like a giant roof suspended above the ground,” he writes. It is an existential condition. Across philosophy, from Heidegger to Baudrillard, from Don DeLillo to Debord, a singular thread weaves: the world, once our shelter from the self, has become self-referential. Where once we encountered beings in our Zuhandensein—ready-to-hand, intimate, meaningful—we now face a procession of Vorhandensein: inert, objectified, mediated. Simulation replaces encounter. Perception is swallowed by spectacle. And the digital era, in Knausgaard’s terms, “distances culture from the body”. “It is not just the body that disappears—it is the awareness that we are dying,” he writes. What we face is not merely technological change, but what I would call existential dissonance: the erosion of resonance between our inner world, our social world, and the material world. It is the tension that arises when the way one lives, acts, and relates is misaligned with one’s deeper sense of meaning, reality, and value. It manifests itself as a disturbance in being — an unease that is not merely emotional, but rooted in a felt gap between one’s existence as it is and as it could or should be. It is the voice of the self calling from within the noise of the world. This is why Knausgaard’s essay matters for anyone working in, with, or around AI. Because the question isn’t: What can these systems do? It is: What do they undo? “We can explain everything. But we understand nothing,” he writes. Manipulated constructions of truth, in such a time, becomes a currency. As shown in recent events—from Francesca Gino’s research fraud at Harvard to Bezos’ all-female crew venture into space, and Trump’s detention camp —truth is no longer that which corresponds with reality, but that which performs and sells. As Baudrillard warned, the simulation no longer hides the real—it becomes it. And yet, something remains. Knausgaard writes not to despair, but to stay. In the body. In death. In silence. In the concrete. If you seek to understand what is happening—not just in AI, but in the very metaphysics of modern life—I suggest we begin not with data, but with dissonance. With the feeling that something vital is slipping from view, and that “being in the world” now requires resistance. “We are surrounded by mystery. And yet we act as if everything were known,” he writes. AI will never understand this. But we must. Knausgaard’s full essay from Harper’s Magazine can be read via link in comments. | 19 comments on LinkedIn
Weird Studies
Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."
Guest post: If you’re going to critique science, be scientific about it
Loren K. Mell Editor’s note: This post responds to a Feb. 13 article in The Atlantic, “The Scientific Literature Can’t Save Us Now,” written by Retraction Watch cofounders Adam Marcus and Ivan Oran…
The Demon-Haunted World
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. In it, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession
Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.
57- Artificial Intelligence with Daniel Ross | Life From Plato's Cave
In this episode with Daniel Ross, we do a deep dive into AI. Though I've been thinking about AI (https://marioveen.com/2004/06/14/intelligent-artificiality/) I didn't really address it on this podcast yet. And who better to start this theme with than a philosopher of technology. Daniel Ross obtained his doctorate from Monash University in 2002. He is the author of Violent Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis: Steps Towards a Metacosmics (Open Humanities Press, 2021 -free to download). He is also the co-director with David Barison of the feature documentary The Ister (rent or buy on Vimeo), which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2004, and which won awards in Montreal and Marseille. Through that film, he met the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, and has subsequently published twelve volumes of translation of Stiegler’s work, most recently The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism (Polity Press, 2019) and Nanjing Lectures 2016–2019 (Open Humanities Press, 2020 - free to download), along with the collective volume by Stiegler and the Internation Collective entitled Bifurcate: ‘There Is No Alternative’ (Open Humanities Press, 2022 - free to download). The most recent translation is Immense Regression (K. Verlag). This is the first volume of Stiegler's work What is called caring? and we will discuss it in a future episode. This is my substack: https://marioveen.substack.com/ and my website https://marioveen.com/. You can now order my Dutch language book about Plato's allegory of the cave: https://noordboek.nl/boek/hoe-plato-je-uit-je-grot-sleurt/ (also available as e-book). I hope you enjoy the episode!Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/
Les ScienceGuardians, fantômes de l’intégrité — TheMetaNews
Un groupe d’activistes anonymes s’emploie depuis près d’un an à suivre, voire à menacer juridiquement, les détectives de l’intégrité scientifique. Chroniques d’une guerre invisible.
The hard problem of consciousness is a distraction from the real one | Aeon Essays
It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be
On Virtuality: Deleuze, Bergson, Simondon | Epoché Magazine
A free online philosophy magazine, delivered monthly
Meet the Serbian Businessman/DJ Who Runs the Zombie AI Southwest Journal - Racket
Among Nebojša Vujinović Vujo's portfolio of 2,000 clickbait websites, the defunct Minneapolis neighborhood newspaper is a top performer.
