Noocracy: The Intelligent as Civil Servants?

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
My argument in favour of populism is that the individual has access to knowledge of their own situation that no expert could have.

There needs to be constant communication between the two layers with the people informing experts of their situation and feeding back on ideas and implemented schemes.
 

luka

Well-known member
What about data as a commodity that everyone has, in a sense, an unlimited capacity to generate? That will grant the masses some kind of pseudo-socialist leverage, in the sense that the database is impartial as to what data it subsumes.

Once we affirm the individual-unto-dividual development, a development that will almost certainly happen regardless of whether or not we affirm it, we claim, perhaps, a new set of rights.

dont understand this bit. what's data for? why does it give the herd leverage? what is individual-unto-dividual development and why does it bring a new set of rights into being alongside it?
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
My argument in favour of populism is that the individual has access to knowledge of their own situation that no expert could have.

There needs to be constant communication between the two layers with the people informing experts of their situation and feeding back on ideas and implemented schemes.
How much of the individual's situation can be succinctly and effectively communicated via data collection? Data which is then integrated into the system that collects the data. In theory, the effectiveness should increase, becoming more and more precise and accurate, as the data fuels the system.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Data collection is ok as long as the expert level understands that it needs to be willing to learn from the people (where learn means take in what they are saying and understand and accept where they're coming from)...eg. the experts failed to predict Brexit because the only data they could countenance was to do with economic needs.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
My argument in favour of populism is that the individual has access to knowledge of their own situation that no expert could have.
Not necessarily, especially in medical terms, which is one of most significant breakthrough areas of anti-expert populism - "I know what's best for my kids", says the mother as she denies her child life-saving treatment because of something she read on Facebook.

I mean, sure, obviously I'm the person best placed to describe what my heart subjectively feels like if I start to present with an arhythmia. But I actually know far less about it than a cardiologist does.
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
patients generally do tell their GP what they've got and what to prescribe for it these days althougth i suppose you can argue GPs aren't experts.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
dont understand this bit. what's data for? why does it give the herd leverage? what is individual-unto-dividual development and why does it bring a new set of rights into being alongside it?
The data would be used to inform and develop the omnipresent surveillance database/machine, which would come to embody an increasingly god-like figure in a way. In this theological light, which is by no means the only light to see it in, the experts/intelligent/poindexters constitute the inner circle, but they are kept in check by the masses by means of the machine. All the masses would need to know how to do is watch the data of the experts, and use that information to hold them accountable. What would that precisely consist of? I'm not sure.

The individual-unto-dividual thing is from Deleuze's "Postscripts on the Society of Control" wherein he describes how the mechanism of control will become more and more precise and exactly because of data collection, and how the individual ("individual" here implying indivisible, from what I gather) become dividual, divisible. That is, the person is no longer the base unit. They can be broken down, perhaps endlessly, into every more nuanced data.

What new rights? By taking ownership of their data, the dividual citizen now harnesses that endlessly break-downable source of commodity. In a sense, labor is replaced by data-generation. That is the thing that will become the primary means of exploitation, arguably - although perhaps that is too large a step to make. Instead of blindly letting your data be siphoned, you take control of it, and determine how much to release, to what ends, etc.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Data collection is ok as long as the expert level understands that it needs to be willing to learn from the people (where learn means take in what they are saying and understand and accept where they're coming from)...eg. the experts failed to predict Brexit because the only data they could countenance was to do with economic needs.
That could be one of the central functions of the noocrats/poindexters - they can humanize the data before integrating it into the database/master-algorithm.

How to we make sure they aren't leaning the data in their direction?

First, by having enough of a variety in the noocratic constituency - an ecosystem of ideologies that grouped and deincentivized or outright prohibited from growing into a majority.

Second, voices in the media market may be able to hold leverage over the noocrats because of the sway the media may have? Not sure.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
patients generally do tell their GP what they've got and what to prescribe for it these days althougth i suppose you can argue GPs aren't experts.
No, they're generalists, by definition. They treat the commonplace illnesses and refer you to experts for anything fancy, don't they?

They still (hopefully!) have better knowledge of any given organ or system than the average lay person.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
hmm, still don't understand that that stuff about rights. really confusing.
I mean, I don't really have an understanding myself, which is why I thought it would be helpful to hash it all out here.

In as far as the labor-power is the commodity of the classical worker/prole/whatever, the data-power is the commodity of the noocratic dividual citizen. They gain political leverage from their ability to generate data and refine the algorithms that drive the species to evolution and societal improvement, etc.

edit: where the former citizen is individual, the latter is dividual.
 

version

Well-known member
What's your background? It might help the rest of us if we had a better handle on where you were coming from. Are you a scientist?
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Just got out of school, currently unemployed, staying with the family, considering routes for independent scholarship. A ton of spare time lately.
 

luka

Well-known member
Just got out of school, currently unemployed, staying with the family, considering routes for independent scholarship. A ton of spare time lately.

have you ever been prescribed Ritalin by any chance? I don't mean that in a bad way. You just remind me of an American friend that's been taking it since childhood.
 

luka

Well-known member
a lot of what you're saying has already happened obviously. the utopian, Californian aspect, the one the rest of us have trouble with, is this idea of optimisation I think.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There's that, plus the starting threads with a 5,000 word essay like "this just occurred to me in the shower this morning..."

(Again, not a criticism.)
 
Top