4 Chan.

linebaugh

Well-known member
And targeted advertising zaps magic from the world. Its sad and boring. Cant think of another concept so easily mapped onto capitalist realism.

I'm all for Instagram recommending me cool band tees or build it yourself hurdy gurdys (anyone else get that one?) I'm just skeptical of going past this point
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I'm not sure this conversation can continue productively between Padraig and I because we seem to have critically different conceptions of what counts as "people in control of/programming an ML algorithm" and whether ML can be local or is automatically a "universalized technical knowledge." I, too, have read Seeing Like A State, and am all for metis, I just don't find it a particularly relevant frame here.

Unsure of how to get past this.
you could have a localized ML for a specific thing but machine learning itself will always be a techne

like you're not going to go to your local ML guru with localized knowledge, you're going to contract it to some company somewhere

in your school shooter case, you're not going to have the principle of the school in charge of the ML. that's the point.
 

sus

Well-known member
It seems like this fear of "mind control" by advertisers stems from a misunderstanding of how ads work—the widely promulgated by psychologically unfounded idea that there is a "Pavlovian training" or "activation of the unconscious" in play.
 

sus

Well-known member
Whereas the primary things that make ads work are, first and foremost, informationally alerting people to products, and second, massaging or aligning or exploiting the existing fashion landscape of signifiers to align a product with a type of person
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
It seems like this fear of "mind control" by advertisers stems from a misunderstanding of how ads work—the widely promulgated by psychologically unfounded idea that there is a "Pavlovian training" or "activation of the unconscious" in play.
youre over thinking it. ads are effective. no denying that.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
btw @suspendedreason is there any single book you'd recommend on the failure of institutional decision-making in the Iraq War?

an Iraq War equivalent of The Best and the Brightest

I have a copy of Thomas Ricks - Fiasco, but I never got around to reading it
 

sus

Well-known member
And targeted advertising zaps magic from the world. Its sad and boring. Cant think of another concept so easily mapped onto capitalist realism.

I'm all for Instagram recommending me cool band tees or build it yourself hurdy gurdys (anyone else get that one?) I'm just skeptical of going past this point

Isn't it a bit suspicious that the exact point we're currently at is the exact point you're comfortable with?

@beiser the reason stalking is a problem that is in the lawbooks is because it includes harassment, non-voluntary exchanges, and physical violence. Analogizing anonymized information tracking and customized product display is so different in every practical way from that situation it breaks down.
 

beiser

Well-known member
surveillance capitalism is (so far, until someone figures out how to send ads directly into yr brain) its most advanced and insidious form but it's all the lie, the creation of want. it's obviously not going anywhere, it's also the beating heart of capitalism, so it is what it is.
its not the beating heart, it’s a sideshow, production still reigns supreme. Facebook, Google, okay, you’re at 2 trillion dollars, throw in a couple hundred billion more for the long tail, but it’s just not really that big. Sure, you have some funny oracle system that tries to get you to buy things, it doesn’t work though, it’s a sideshow. Apple is the same size as the two of them, they make phones. I’ve never been anywhere that engages in production through surveillance, it usually doesn’t even work and when it does it adds a couple percentage points to your sales, it’s not material. It’s an attention game, the targeting is never sophisticated, data brokers work by systematically inventing fake data. If surveillance capitalism was so big, I would’ve met someone getting paid by it by now.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Isn't it a bit suspicious that the exact point we're currently at is the exact point you're comfortable with?
I didnt say that. I said Im not so sure about going foward. Im not sure what my idealized comfort zone of advertising would look like
 
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sus

Well-known member
@padraig (u.s.) also Ben Connable's Embracing the Fog of War: Assessment and Metrics in Counterinsurgency is supposed to be pretty good tho I've only read reviews/excerpts
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
@beiser the reason stalking is a problem that is in the lawbooks is because it includes harassment, non-voluntary exchanges, and physical violence. Analogizing anonymized information tracking and customized product display is so different in every practical way from that situation it breaks down.
No, beisers first comment was vague and about self determination. Which maps on just fine.
 

sus

Well-known member
and yes I'm American. I'm about 10 years older than you guys and I have less formal schooling but (almost certainly) more "life experience", not just in terms of having lived longer but having lived a lot of different things. and I come from a different political tradition. just a different way of thinking.

the only other American regular, unless I'm forgetting someone, is Leo

Isn't Linebaugh American?? Or ya mean among over-thirties

DW Padraig I respect your perspective, also @beiser is very unschooled I believe, I was messaging him and he mentioned he only did 2 years of community college
 

sus

Well-known member
No, beisers first comment was vague and about self determination. Which maps on just fine.

And as I said earlier, I don't believe ads mess with your self-determination. I don't think they "hijack your decision-making" any more than any other informational display does.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I like Kilcullen's Measuring Progress in Afghanistan
thx

I'm familiar with Kilcullen. he was one of the great names during the COIN fad. I read some of him as well as Galula back in the late 00s.

it's pretty wild how closely the Afghanistan/Iraq experience did mirror Vietnam in the sense, with the difference that Kennedy's people were obsessed with counterinsurgency before they committed American combat troops to a country, not after the commitment
 
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