/lit/ - Literature

>>12620882
here's a more comprehensive definition, and from the book.

>§8.5 Modernity only linearizes in order to delinearize more thoroughly. The descendant of the thermodynamic time-gradient is cybernetics, based upon the formulation of thermic regulation through feedback (the steam-engine ‘governor’), and ascending through increasingly sophisticated models of entropy dissipation – or local entropy decrease – into the mathematical sciences of turbulence, chaos, complex systems, self-organization, individuation, and emergent (or spontaneous) order. The abstract object of all such studies is the convergent wave, characterizing all natural process with reverse time-signature. Any such local inversion of the arrow of time is produced by an exportation of entropy, conducted by a dissipative system, or real time machine. These systems typify the self-assembling units of biological and social organization – cells, organisms, eco-systems, tribes, cities, and (market) economies. In each case, an individuating complex machine swims against the cosmic (global) current, piloted by feedback circuitry that dumps internal disorder into an external sink. The cosmic time-economy is conserved, in aggregate, but becomes ever more unevenly distributed as local complexity is enhanced. Self-cultivating – or auto-productive – complexity is time disintegration (templexity).

>§9.0 Real templexity cannot be time-travel. The same natural- scientific conceptual apparatus that enables its formulation simultaneously installs the principles of thermodynamic economy that discipline its models. When rigorously stressed under logical examination, however, time-travel drama tends to release abstract diagrams that converge upon real potentialities. Most significantly, it arrives – through pure fictional hypothesis – at a schematics of auto-production.

>§9.1 The auto-productive potential of time-travel circuitry attains exact conceptual specification in the Bootstrap Paradox. Wikipedia provides a succinct illustration: "A man travels back in time and falls in love with and marries a woman, who he later learns was his own mother, who then gives birth to him. He is therefore his own father and, because of this, also his own grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather, great- great-great grandfather and so on, making his ancestry infinite, and also giving him no origin for his paternal genetic material.” The Oedipus myth echoes this structure so closely it is tempting to consider it a model of the Bootstrap Paradox, unfolded into disentangled time. It illustrates templex auto-production in a dramatic, anthropological form.

>>12577713
>what's his case?
kek. i was afraid you might ask me this! it's not easy to sum up, and he uses a lot of references to logic, philosophy of mind, computers, or philosophers i'm most definitely *not* well acquainted with - Sellars, Quine, Brandom, who are basically undiscovered countries for me. my thing - if i can be said to have a thing - is more intellectual history, i feel like i am kinda-sorta adept at explaining the relations between philosophers, where they link and where they break down, diverge, and so on. the larger story for me is usually an old-fashioned one: Death of God, wat do? more recently: Death of Marx, oh shit.

but this is where Negarestani becomes an interesting guy: imho, we are crafting for ourselves a kind of automatic planet, and this is a process that invokes a whole host of truly fascinating continentals, in one sense or another: Hegel, Marx, Stiegler, Simondon, Derrida, Stiegler, Yuk Hui and Land. something is going on - well, i think so - with recursion, cybernetics, automation, programming. this is my own take, anyways, that a certain era predicated on the metaphysics of difference (or anthropocene) is ending, and a new kind of epoch looms: the age of the integrated circuit. this discovery of automation, of capitalism as the planetary cosmotechnic par excellence - is a thing that joins everyone together. but very few continental philosophers are also skilled computer programmers or math geeks. (which is good for me, because i suck at math). Badiou is basically unreadable for me, but YH knows what he's talking about, and Negarestani has all kinds of things to say about the computer program. Land does also, in his own way, and he has basically plugged himself into the Bitcoin paper like it's the Holodeck and has found all kinds of fascinating stuff to write about there.

what Negarestani is doing is trying to formulate something like a general theory of programmatic intelligence, an unshackling of intelligence as an open-ended project. for Land of course this tends to get wrapped up in very fantasies of ultra-libertarianism (teleoplexy) that also leave him grinding his teeth in fury when said fantasies encounter the psychopolitics of the market (Woke Capital). RN avoids most of this, however.

if you read his essays on e-flux as a prologue to I&S it might make more sense. the inhuman doesn't have to mean the horrible, the nightmarish, and so on. he's looking for something like the autonomy of reason as represented in a general process of revision, the best way of which is through the iterative program.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/52/59920/the-labor-of-the-inhuman-part-i-human/
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/53/59893/the-labor-of-the-inhuman-part-ii-the-inhuman/

(cont'd)

>>12095627
>What happens when two hyperstitions conflict with each other?
https://vimeo.com/129609470
https://vimeo.com/218908974
https://vimeo.com/262025984