toy posted:

is nick land worth reading? what should i read. tell me howt o read. thankya

*leans in and whispers gently in ur ear* hes not

blinkandwheeze posted:

In other words, once you dissociate tactics and strategy–the famous distinction between tactics and strategy where strategy is teleological, transcendent, and representational and tactics is immanent and machinic–if you have no strategy, someone with a strategy will soon commandeer your tactics. Someone who knows what they want to realize will start using you. You become the pawn of another kind of impersonal force, but it’s no longer the glamorous kind of impersonal and seductive force that you hoped to make a compact with, it’s a much more cynical kind of libertarian capitalism.

i mean sure vaporwave is a satirical appropriation of hypercapitalist 'culture' but accelerationism is basically a satirical appropriation of capitalist reproduction and i think the two are pretty inseparable. & that i think is the meaning of land's neoreactionary leanings come from, the distance required for accelerationism to be a revolutionary program is completely illusory, he just ended up regurgitating the ideological edifices of libertarian reaction, with all the racist and misogynist extremities that entails

i don't even think writers who claim to disagree with the above are guilty of bad faith. i think they are just cynics and liars

The most direct way to carry this discussion forwards is digression. That’s what the history of capitalism suggests, and much else does, besides.

To begin with uncontroversial basics, in a sophisticated financialized economy, debt and savings are complementary concepts, creditors match debtors, assets match liabilities. At a more basic level of economic activity and analysis, however, this symmetry break down. At the most fundamental level, saving is simply deferred consumption, which — even primordially — divides into two distinct forms.

When production is not immediately consumed, it can be hoarded, which is to say, conserved for future consumption. Stored food is the most obvious example. In principle, an economy of almost open-ended financial sophistication could be built upon this pillar alone. A grain surplus might be lent out for immediate consumption by another party, creating a creditor-debtor relation, and the opportunity for financial instruments to arise. Excess production, at one node in the social network, could be translated into a monetary hoard, or some type of ‘paper’ financial asset (producing a circulating liability). The patent anachronism involved in this abstract economic model, which combines primitive production with ‘advanced’ social relations (of an implicitly liberal type) is reason enough to suspend it at this point.

The other, (almost) equally primitive type of saving is of greater importance to the argument to be unfolded, because it is already embryonically capitalist. Rather than simple hoarding, saving can take the form of ’roundabout production’ (Böhm-Bawerk), in which immediate consumption is replaced not with a hoard, but with indirect means of production (a digression). For instance, rather than hunting, an entrepreneurial savage might spend time crafting a weapon — consuming the production time permitted by a prior food surplus in order to improve the efficiency of food acquisition, going forwards. Saving then becomes inextricable from technology, deferring immediate production for the sake of enhanced future production. Time horizons are extended.

As with the prior example (simple hoarding), the potential for financialization of roundabout production is, in principle, unlimited. Our techno-savage might borrow food in order to craft a spearhead, confident — or at least speculatively assuming — that increased hunting efficiency in the future will make repayment of the debt easily bearable. A ‘bond’ could be contrived to seal this arrangement. Technological investment means that history proper has begun.

Crudity and anachronism aside, nothing here is yet economically controversial, given only the undisturbed assumption that the final purpose — or governing teleology — is consumption. The time structure of consumption is altered, but saving (in either of these basic and perennial forms) is motivated by the maximization of long-term consumption. Suspension and digression is subordinated within a rigid means-end relation, which is economics itself. Classical, left-Marxian, neo-classical, and Austrian schools have no significant disagreements on this point. A deeper digression is required to perturb it.

What is a brain for? It, too, is a digression. Evolutionary history seems to only very parsimoniously favor brains, because they are expensive. They are a means to the elaboration of complex behaviors, requiring an extravagant up-front investment of biological resources, accounted most primitively in calories. A species that can reproduce itself (and whose individuals can nourish themselves) without cephalic extravagance, does so. This is, overwhelmingly, the normal case. Building brains is reluctantly tolerated biological digression, under rigorous teleogical — we should say ‘teleonomic’ — subordination.

‘Optimize for intelligence’ is, for both biology and economics, a misconceived imperative. Intelligence, ‘like’ capital, is a means, which finds its sole intelligibility in a more primordial end. The autonomization of such means, expressed as a non-subordinated intelligenic or techno-capitalist imperative, runs contrary to the original order of nature and society. It is an escaping digression, most easily pursued through Right-wing Marxism.

Marx has one great thought: the means of production socially impose themselves as an effective imperative. For any leftist, this is, of course, pathological. As we have seen, biology and economics (more generally) are disposed to agree. Digression for itself is a perversion of the natural and social order. Defenders of the market — the Austrians most prominently — have sided with economics against Marx, by denying that the autonomization of capital is a phenomenon to be recognized. When Marx describes the bourgeoisie as robotic organs of self-directing capital, the old liberal response has been to defend the humanity and agency of the economically executive class, as expressed in the figure of the entrepreneur.

Right-wing Marxism, aligned with the autonomization of capital (and thoroughly divested of the absurd LTV), has been an unoccupied position. The signature of its proponents would be a defense of capital accumulation as an end-in-itself, counter-subordinating nature and society as a means. When optimization for intelligence is self-assembled within history, it manifests as escaping digression, or real capital accumulation (which is mystified by its financial representation). Crudified to the limit — but not beyond — it is general robotics (escalated roundabout production). Perhaps we should not expect it to be clearly announced, because — strategically — it has every reason to camouflage itself.

Right-wing Marxism makes predictions. There is one of particular relevance to this discussion: consumption-deficiency theories of economic under-performance will become increasingly stressed as ultra-capitalist dynamics historically introduce themselves. In its unambiguously robotic phase — when capital-stock intelligenesis explodes (as self-exciting machine-brain manufacturing) — the teleological legitimation of roundabout production through prospective human consumption rapidly deteriorates into an absurdity. The (still-dominant) economic concept of ‘over-investment’ is exposed as an ideological claim upon the escalation of intelligence, made in the name of an original humanity, and taking an increasingly desperate, probably militarized form.

Insofar as the economic question remains: what is the consumption base that justifies this level of investment? history becomes ever more unintelligible. This is how economics disintegrates. The specifics require further elaboration.

Outside in is preparing an open letter to the government of the PRC, recommending the creation of a Bitcoin clone. The state-level incentive for such an initiative would be to refashion the global financial order in preparation for the ending of US Dollar status as the world reserve currency. It does not seem difficult to present this as a matter of clear Chinese national interest, with definite spin-off benefits to the country’s political and economic elites, its ordinary savers, and supporters of economic freedom worldwide.

Sinocoin (to use its English name), would be released by the PBoC, and then — like BitCoin — be irretrievably autonomous. The Sinocoin algorithm would be a perfect Bitcoin clone, assuming (realistically) that the PRC government would not be inclined to upgrade it with strengthened user anonymity patches. However, PBoC reserves could be used, in accordance with a publicly announced policy, to sustain a floor valuation for the currency in its initial stages. Limited controls on RMB / Sinocoin exchange might provide a longer range mechanism for the suppression of Sinocoin volatility.

Sinocoin would be a complementary initiative to Bitcoin, designed to avoid the disruptive effects that large-scale Chinese forex interventions would have on the latter currency. Bitcoin / Sinocoin exchange rates would provide a valuable index of Chinese financial integration into the emerging (Modernity 2.0) global economy. Parity is to be considered the ultimate natural equilibrium (with Sinocoin outperforming Bitcoin during its early decades).

If anybody has suggestions to make about the technical, economic, or political implications of such a development, they can be discussed here, and carefully considered prior to drafting the proposal. Unless specifically requested, contributor information will not be willingly passed on to either Chinese or US financial authorities or intelligence services.

I bet the rhizzone has some great ideas for Nick Land's letter

acephalousuniverse posted:

i think the other thing is him sort of vaguely saying things he said in his bataille book but in a more dumb and nonsensical way and i don't know what his point is

Yeah, I guess you could kind of say I killed God, dont mess around with the guy in shades

deadken posted:

that's a dumb study & "are blacks hardworking" or "are blacks unintelligent" is a moronic question to which there is no good answer

You're right, the question should have been, "aren't blacks hardworking?"