Oct 23, 2023·edited Oct 23, 2023Liked by alice maz
Your writing is some of the best I've ever come across and I hope you keep going!
I truly can't find what "To The Stars" refers to here, interested in reading the source material but haven't been able to find an author name or anything else on google - if you could link me it would be much appreciated!
(which might be one of the better places to ask for an invite, aside from the subreddit, which will let you request an invite but is lowkey kinda dead otherwise)
... with all that said, be advised i don't check my Substack messages very often :)
Very thought-provoking! Some points/doubts of interest:
(1) Cultivating Virtue. Not sure this is distinctly Confucian - Tocqueville says something similar, in a way which is more compelling imo. First, he writes in a post-enlightenment, secular context and therefore faces a problem-space where natural law/the heavens is no longer an answer. Second, he is more individualistic: he locates civic virtue in the pride of self-mastery and ensuing moral responsibility of social/individual improvement. In America: "the humblest individual [possesses] a certain degree of self-respect"; a desire to be "better informed and more active" and to improve his or her condition. It creates "an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force and energy" in the whole society. 1:160-1. For two interwar cultural depictions of this secular(?) civic virtue: Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Winsor McCay's political art https://larrysanger.org/2019/11/a-celebration-of-winsor-mccay/ Damn curious if/why you think is Confucianism is better.
(2) Techno-futurism & humanism. There are obvious tensions between these, and To The Stars only gets around them by using obscure techno-babble to code in a hard stop (the 'Volokhov Criterion'). Human ethics and morality is one thing, but coding the human condition itself into AI and tech is... ontologically dubious? Besides, even if it was possible to formalise the human condition we'd likely face the radical destruction of any notion of free will. It would open the black box of human motive/thought processing/experience, the obscurity of which is probably the main fact allowing us to imagine we have agency. Goodbye existing notions of responsibility, blame, self-control etc; hello manipulation at the psychogical level of classic literature (I push this button, and you are bombarded with a cactus here, 2-tone buzz there, spicy pickle tomorrow, and n other sensory exposures, and now you have an inexplicable confidence in the landed elite, flowing partially (69%) from a belief in the good life anchored in memories of playing in forests as a child).
(3) About aristocracy of merit. You're dead right, the problem is stability. Capra films are all about the civic virtue mentioned above (Mr Smith, It's a Wonderful Life/ also 12 Angry Men & To Kill a Mockinbird). The courageous man of virtue stands up for society. They are also cynical and depressing: if those lone actors died, or became ill, or - er - never lived, then we immediately seem to default into shitsville (which, according to Capra, looks remarkably like the average modern downtown). The real trick, it seems, is to somehow culturally engineer a society where there are enough virtuous individuals to prevent this fragility - but one suspects (a) this is very tricky, given 'cultural engineering' is not exactly... engineering; and (b) there are *possibly* deeper structural mechanisms at play (technology?) which will flip even the most immaculately planned culture of virtue, regardless of its path dependency and home advantage, into supermarket-brand moral pluralism.
Your writing is some of the best I've ever come across and I hope you keep going!
I truly can't find what "To The Stars" refers to here, interested in reading the source material but haven't been able to find an author name or anything else on google - if you could link me it would be much appreciated!
Edit*: unless it's this: https://archive.ph/K2pI4, in which case I leave it for future readers
What a fine and tapestried essay. You have made the prospects of ai mediated political futures feel real and yes alluring.
Sounds like you use ChatGPT for an advanced form of rubberducking?
hi, I just wanted to say that I wrote about ... *checks* ...
320,000 words worth of To The Stars fanfic?
yes that's fanfic of the fanfic
and... I thought you should know
that there is a small Community
and if you are looking for such things
and are ready for such things
then the place for the community
is on the Discord server
and I for one would welcome you there :)
... and to a lesser extent, the Sufficient Velocity forums thread:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/to-the-stars-puella-magi-madoka-magica.3927/
(which might be one of the better places to ask for an invite, aside from the subreddit, which will let you request an invite but is lowkey kinda dead otherwise)
... with all that said, be advised i don't check my Substack messages very often :)
Very thought-provoking! Some points/doubts of interest:
(1) Cultivating Virtue. Not sure this is distinctly Confucian - Tocqueville says something similar, in a way which is more compelling imo. First, he writes in a post-enlightenment, secular context and therefore faces a problem-space where natural law/the heavens is no longer an answer. Second, he is more individualistic: he locates civic virtue in the pride of self-mastery and ensuing moral responsibility of social/individual improvement. In America: "the humblest individual [possesses] a certain degree of self-respect"; a desire to be "better informed and more active" and to improve his or her condition. It creates "an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force and energy" in the whole society. 1:160-1. For two interwar cultural depictions of this secular(?) civic virtue: Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Winsor McCay's political art https://larrysanger.org/2019/11/a-celebration-of-winsor-mccay/ Damn curious if/why you think is Confucianism is better.
(2) Techno-futurism & humanism. There are obvious tensions between these, and To The Stars only gets around them by using obscure techno-babble to code in a hard stop (the 'Volokhov Criterion'). Human ethics and morality is one thing, but coding the human condition itself into AI and tech is... ontologically dubious? Besides, even if it was possible to formalise the human condition we'd likely face the radical destruction of any notion of free will. It would open the black box of human motive/thought processing/experience, the obscurity of which is probably the main fact allowing us to imagine we have agency. Goodbye existing notions of responsibility, blame, self-control etc; hello manipulation at the psychogical level of classic literature (I push this button, and you are bombarded with a cactus here, 2-tone buzz there, spicy pickle tomorrow, and n other sensory exposures, and now you have an inexplicable confidence in the landed elite, flowing partially (69%) from a belief in the good life anchored in memories of playing in forests as a child).
(3) About aristocracy of merit. You're dead right, the problem is stability. Capra films are all about the civic virtue mentioned above (Mr Smith, It's a Wonderful Life/ also 12 Angry Men & To Kill a Mockinbird). The courageous man of virtue stands up for society. They are also cynical and depressing: if those lone actors died, or became ill, or - er - never lived, then we immediately seem to default into shitsville (which, according to Capra, looks remarkably like the average modern downtown). The real trick, it seems, is to somehow culturally engineer a society where there are enough virtuous individuals to prevent this fragility - but one suspects (a) this is very tricky, given 'cultural engineering' is not exactly... engineering; and (b) there are *possibly* deeper structural mechanisms at play (technology?) which will flip even the most immaculately planned culture of virtue, regardless of its path dependency and home advantage, into supermarket-brand moral pluralism.
So hot stuff, any ideas how to fix (2) and (3)?