I am really getting the strong sense in part 2 of "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace" that Adam Curtis loathes and despises the science of ecology and everyone involved in it.

I don't know why he has such strong negative feelings about a field of study that seems to me basically about saving the planet, and his attitude gives me kind of far-right vibes.

Like I'm figuring so far that he probably thinks that ecology is just a mask for powerful technocrats to try to control people? And he probably thinks that climate change is a conspiracy as well?

I don't get what he's saying and the part he's not saying really bugs me.

It will be interesting to see if that's really where he's headed or not.

My feeling has always been that ecologists, cyberneticists and systems thinkers are much *less* machine-like in their thinking than the theorists who came before them; Curtis seems to believe the opposite, which really startles me.

Basically, I think I would classify Curtis as "anti-globalist" (with all that that phrase implies) in his thinking - not anti-capitalist or anti-authoritarian. Wouldn't be at all surprised if he voted for Trump.

I could be wrong but he's giving me those vibes.

What annoys me about the "Cloud" of 2022 is not that it's "Cybernetic self-organization gone wrong" but rather that it's explicitly NOT cybernetic self-organization; it's top-down centric, again, like we had in the 1980s.

There's a story there about how we lost the cybernetic vision through taking it for granted, first by deregulating too fast and then by panicking and consolidating/controlling all the things.

But I don't think that's the story Curtis is telling.

You can't have BOTH cybernetics AND "tech unicorns" with a "founder" cult. They are two opposite visions. Self-organization should not be creating huge centralised behemoths. If it is, it's failed.

Somehow Silicon Valley hasn't put A and B together and is still trying to do - and praise - both.

THAT'S the contradiction in "the Californian Ideology" that interests me.

Curtis is bagging on the cybernetics part and I don't think he understands what he's looking at.

OH YEAH HERE IT IS

"The Club of Rome", "Limits to Growth " and WORLD2.

This was was a major far-right bogeyman back in the 1980s. This was a key part of the "omg an evil globalist cabal is secretly trying to Social Engineer us all".

And the words Curtis uses to describe Limits to Growth: "bureaucrats" "rich businessmen" "the world Needed to be Managed"

Curtis isn't on the Left. He's repeating far-right memes.

That's my strong feeling based on half-way through AWOBMOLG.

He really doesn't like the idea of "equilibrium" -- which I assume means that he thinks that perpetual economic growth is sustainable on a finite planet.

@natecull I don't think that's a fair assumption. It's been a while since I saw it, considering it came out in 2011, but as I recall, I took that much more to argue against "steady-state" managed solution that try to artificially suppress existing movements and changes instead of reacting to and flowing with them. Imposing a static view of the world instead of embracing change.

@pettter

" took that much more to argue against "steady-state" managed solution that try to artificially suppress existing movements and changes"

And is a "managed solution" that "artificially suppresses" changes in fact what the extreme laissez-faire non-interventionist capitalist economics advocated by Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan, introduced in Episode 1, that was shown as leading to economic crisis, was actually about?

@natecull Basically yes.

"Laissez-faire" capitalism basically isn't, and has never been. It's always been about transplanting power from the state into the hands of individual capitalists and companies, who are then expected to manage and extract resources as far as possible.

All the various arguments in favour of such systems already _assume_ an unperturbable steady-state on top of which The Market can do its thing.

Neoliberalism is about creating that steady state.

@pettter @natecull I've not seen AWOBMOLG but I've watched Hypernormalization in which he certainly seems to be drawing attention to and criticizing the concept of neoliberalism and the steady-state concept from the crux that the steady-state abandons any ideology in preference of having control over the present moment by giving up any particular direction of the future. I do wonder if that underlying thrust would extrapolate on to criticism of any other simulation or modelling on the basis of distrust of its *use* rather than its *validity*, but that's totally a supposition from a point of not having watched the material you're pointing out.

I certainly have my own suspicions of Curtis - I feel his work has a *lot* of value based on what he draws attention to and the type of systematic thinking, but I reserve judgement on any implied conclusion. Mostly chiming in here because it's interesting so don't see what I wrote as a defense or an attack :)

@grimmware @pettter

Basically my problem with Adam Curtis so far (two episodes of Machines of Loving Grace) is that he takes forever to say very little, it's not structured, he doesn't cite sources, *and does it with a dark menacing emotional overtone of music and images* which is utterly unrelated to his actual subject matter or argument.

He walks and talks like a propagandist slinging fear and despair and I just don't care for that style of communication.

@grimmware @pettter

Like, his thoughts are just *so half-formed and confused* and he's seething with anger and cynicism, and he keeps half-making suggestions of allegations but not following through. It's a pattern I'm familiar with from the right-wing conspiracy materials I grew up with.

The germ of a point he seems to have so far is "systems/ecology thinking circa 1960s assumed a steady state; Ayn Rand thought similarly; unknown later ecological thinking disagrees".

@grimmware @pettter

But there's multiple separate takes on ecology and systems thinking! *Which particular* ecological models does he disagree with? What sub-field is this guy he's got on screen talking about "we now know natural systems aren't steady state" from? How did the field change over time? Lay out your arguments, man! Explain! Be precise! But he doesn't. He just insinuates and moves on.

He's the very definition of the Gish Gallop.

@grimmware @pettter

I mean... homeostasis is a real thing, isn't it? There exist biological systems which DO self-regulate. At least within some bounds; once outside of those bounds, they stop regulating, sure. Nothing is 100%.

And he slings the word "system" around like it's an insult; like it was a mistaken idea, like phlogiston. Yet systems exist! But he seems to think the very concept of a system, and all forms of system theory, is laughable.

@natecull My take is that "systems" aren't self-contained. They always exist as parts of some larger context, and in relation to smaller parts that any systemic models will generally fail to model properly. The only true simulation of a system is not only just the system itself, but, in fact, the entire universe in which it exists.

All models are wrong, but some are useful. But all are wrong.
@grimmware

@pettter @natecull yeah but I mean to shit on the idea at all is to essentially give up on the idea of humans ever seeking toward the idea of understanding *anyway*. Model-based thinking is simply a way to hone in on the truth by bridging the gap between human-based allegorical and categorical thinking and what's *actually* happening. It's the lens of understanding and ultimately just a tool, so a critique of the tool is, in my mind, misplaced versus a critique of the use of the tool.

I mean I'm getting out of my depth here anyway having not watched the same specific documentary so I should probably bow out on that front, but I'd certainly argue here that the limits on how we approach systems are on observability and conceptualization which are ultimately human limits. Those are the bounds we have to work within.

@grimmware @pettter

If you do want to watch the documentary, it's on Vimeo. Part 1 is here:

https://vimeo.com/515004292

@natecull @pettter
Thanks!