Data modernism: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{a|devil|}} === Data modernism and the cult of the aggregate === A prelude to the great delamination: There is a strand of modernist thinking that flow...") Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
||
| Line 23: | Line 23: | ||
Did every Conservative voter read the party’s manifesto? Almost certainly, no. Did every Conservative voter who did read it subscribe to every line? Again, almost certainly no. Did ''anyone'' subscribe to every line in it? Perhaps, but by no means certainly. So, can we legitimately infer uniform support for the Conservatives’ manifesto from all who voted Conservative? ''No''. We only do by dint of the political convention that those who vote for a party are deemed to support a manifesto (if one is published). But even that convention is a spectre. And where your vote is an issue-based referendum, there is not even a manifesto. Who knows why 33 million people voted for Brexit? Who could possibly presume to aggregate all those individual value judgments into a single guiding principle? There were 33 million reasons for voting leave. They tell us nothing except... ''leave''. | Did every Conservative voter read the party’s manifesto? Almost certainly, no. Did every Conservative voter who did read it subscribe to every line? Again, almost certainly no. Did ''anyone'' subscribe to every line in it? Perhaps, but by no means certainly. So, can we legitimately infer uniform support for the Conservatives’ manifesto from all who voted Conservative? ''No''. We only do by dint of the political convention that those who vote for a party are deemed to support a manifesto (if one is published). But even that convention is a spectre. And where your vote is an issue-based referendum, there is not even a manifesto. Who knows why 33 million people voted for Brexit? Who could possibly presume to aggregate all those individual value judgments into a single guiding principle? There were 33 million reasons for voting leave. They tell us nothing except... ''leave''. | ||
But yet the delaminated [[Onworld]] — especially as it feeds back its simplified “signal” and thereby amplifies it — we draw our battle lines and attack based on these, invented, signals. We take them, and make them our own. We truck in archetypes of our own devising.<ref>Our personal conceptualisations of archetypes never quite map to the world: the “Google Disappointment Effect” when an image search (or AI prompt) never quite returns the image you had in mind. This is the variation of the “no average fighter pilot” effect. </ref> | But yet the delaminated [[Onworld]] — especially as it feeds back its simplified “signal” and thereby amplifies it — we draw our battle lines and attack based on these, invented, signals. We take them, and make them our own. We truck in archetypes of our own devising.<ref>Our personal conceptualisations of archetypes never quite map to the world: the “Google Disappointment Effect” when an image search (or AI prompt) never quite returns the image you had in mind. This is the variation of the “no average fighter pilot” effect. </ref> | ||
Yet such | So, to take the ''issue du jour'' — fools rush in etc — how you feel about gender identity might depend on how you envisage the quintessential gender-fluid individual: if you see an exotic, beautiful, fragile, elfen, teenaged creature of beguiling androgyny you will see trans people as harmless, vulnerable and in need of all the protections society can offer. If your personal archetype is six-foot male self-identifying to compete in women's sport, or to access women's changing rooms, you will see trans people as predatory and dangerous. | ||
The argument between people holding alternative visions will be fruitless. | |||
Yet such patently ludicrous arguments animate the public squares in the [[Onworld]]. | |||
Hence the delamination: the online world is a world of extruded ghoulish signals aggregated from the unfiltered noise of discourse. The offline world — can we call it the offworld? — is a world of bilateral conversations, one on one. A world of shades, nuance, detail, richness, complexity's and — for the most part — civility. | Hence the delamination: the online world is a world of extruded ghoulish signals aggregated from the unfiltered noise of discourse. The offline world — can we call it the offworld? — is a world of bilateral conversations, one on one. A world of shades, nuance, detail, richness, complexity's and — for the most part — civility. | ||
Feedback loopsand feeding that signal back into the memeplex, without necessarily surveilling it or taking anything out of it. | Feedback loopsand feeding that signal back into the memeplex, without necessarily surveilling it or taking anything out of it. | ||
| Line 34: | Line 37: | ||
{{Sa}} | {{Sa}} | ||
*The [[cult of the average]] | |||
*[[Great delamination]] | *[[Great delamination]] | ||
*[[High modernism]] | *[[High modernism]] | ||
{{Ref}} | {{Ref}} | ||