The Triumph of Determinism

Does the direct real-time feed from a Labour  focus group on "what went well" to the nano-bots that were injected into his bloodstream mean that what we are looking at when we watch Keir Starmer is an actual AI Embodiment of a focus group speaking its words to us like a body-snatched replicant? Is this a horror story worse than Frankenstein or Alien in that all traces of a human consciousness have been replaced by circuitry without our knowledge? Is he just human reduced to mouthpiece for the data that streams through him - "5000 extra appointments in the NHS, the highest rate of growth in the G7...."? Is the real Starmer experiencing the horror of being one of Bacon’s Screaming Popes? After he is deposed will he, waking in a rest home in the Surrey countryside, need to be rehabilitated by being taught how to be a human again?

Human AI

I watched the interview on the 6 o’clock News last night where Chris Mason asked Keir Starmer for his reaction to the fact that he is the least respected PM in history. Starmer’s style in his response (and the style of Reeves and Phillipson) is to project contentment and satisfaction with what he’s doing whatever is happening and to act like an affectless human pianola spewing out ready-made sound bites that will read well in the press. He’s like a human version of AI.

My friend asked his phone the question ‘Is Keir Starmer an android?’ and the AI feature gave this helpful answer…

“No, Keir Starmer is not an android; he is a human politician and lawyer who has served as the Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He has been described as having a robotic demeanor by some critics, but this is a metaphorical expression of his political style, not a literal description.”

Controlling Meaning

Are the Culture Wars about more than the control of the narrative? Perhaps they are about the control of MEANING and interpretation, things that distinguish human beings? The creation of meaning derives from the motherboard of the one doing the creating.

Disallowing Learning

In the latter stages of my teaching career, I noticed the greater and greater tendency to disallow the teacher-learner dynamic on the grounds that the superiority implied meant that it was a kind of “punching-down” oppression. It became more and more fashionable to make a public exhibition of one’s humility in learning, Rousseau-style, from the children. Of course everyone learns stuff in whatever profession they are in so teachers would always be learning things (and sometimes from interactions with children) but this doesn’t justify disallowing the process of teaching. I wonder if there is also now a tendency to disallow the idea that there is a reservoir of wisdom in age in spite of the fact that a definition of wisdom might be the accumulation of knowledge from time and experience?

Malice v Stupidity

 More on MALICE v STUPIDITY. “Let’s rub the Right’s noses in diversity.” Philip Gould (Tony Blair’s SPAD). In the immediate particular this is malicious but it was only said because, in the general, it was believed to be morally justified (it was done for the educational *good* of the Right) for a dangerously stupid reason. The justification was founded on the assumption that, regarding immigration, the Right is devoid of “compassion” which is immoral. This is a stupid and self-righteous idea and a dangerous one if it contributes to the delegitimisation of the Right and the destruction of democratic two-sided conversation. To believe in malice in the general *and* the particular is harder in the West. It is easier to believe in regarding the Russian Revolution as, because of personal matters like the execution of his terrorist brother, figures like Lenin were fuelled by hatred of the establishment and the aristocracy. In the cases of Gould and Blair I think they would be paralysed without a sense of moral justification and horrified by the idea of acting out of naked malice. Especially in the case of Blair with his messianic bent they *had* to feel a sense of justification.

Reality as Given

 If you unburden the human mind of the centrality with which Enlightenment Descartes invested it in Cogito ergo sum it can relax and cheerfully and gratefully accept reality as given.

FRANKENSTEIN- GUILLERMO DEL TORO

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was really a dry run for Bladerunner and the expectations that we now have of artificial intelligence. And as with those fears the whole thing is based on a problem. That problem is that it is perfectly obvious that, if we are still in the dark about the actual nature of human being 300 years after René Descartes was dissecting corpses vainly hoping to find the location of the soul in the pineal gland, it cannot but be impossible to replicate such a creature. In spite of the best efforts of the neuro-scientists, we still simply don't know how free will, human selfhood or intelligence are instantiated. This leaves the AI worriers, Mary Shelley and del Toro with a paradox; if you are suggesting that it is hubristic, not to say impossible to create what a creator God or Evolution (tick box accordingly according to your beliefs) somehow delivered how are they going to create a notional creature who is supposed to have been created by a hubristic Enlightenment scientist who got above his station? What on Earth will that “creature” be like? Guillermo del Toro seems to adopt the Mary Shelley version; a sweet and guileless amalgam of high-minded Percy Bysshe Shelley and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s noble savage who just wants a friend. If you can willingly suspend disbelief over this insuperable paradox the film, as with the book, is tremendous High-Romantic fun. There is the killer line nicely delivered by the Monster in the film to Victor Frankenstein – “You are the true monster” because his hubris, in trying to replace God or Evolution (tick box accordingly according to your beliefs) is the real moral monstrousness in the story. The Heath Robinson, mixed grill appearance of the monster created suitably mocks the comical pretensions of his human creator. And there is a lot of fabulous architecture of the High Gothic/Art Nouveau comic book, dreamscape type we expect from Del Toro. There is an extraordinary Gothic tower perched on the edge of a cliff which doubles as Frankenstein’s lab and reminds one of Gotham City and an electricity sub-station at the same time. There are shades of Jekyll and Hyde in old style Victorian dissection theatres in Edinburgh and there is even a fine dash of Pre-Raphaelite-ism in the spectacle of Frankenstein’s prospective sister-in-law, played by Mia Goth, perched in the corner of a coach in a cloud of turquoise muslin like a sitter for John Everett Millais. Oh, and there are obviously AI (is CGI passé now?) deer and wolves which seems appropriate somehow. And I can tell Gerald Sholto, who loves Mary Shelley’s closing sequence, that this version begins in fine rerum.