Aristotle's phronesis is similar to how Bernard Stiegler uses "savoir vivre," or knowledge of how to live. Savoir vivre isn't knowledge in the sense of facts and information; it's an organic faculty of judgment that can't be reduced to a rule or pattern. Stiegler argues that technologies that exteriorize memory (what he calls "mnemotechnologies") degrade savoir vivre, and that we're undergoing something like a savoir vivre extinction event right now, which is part of a broader process of mass proletarianization via tech.
Some academics are writing about this. Sun-Ha Hong's essay "Prediction as Extraction of Discretion" is good: "prediction is not primarily a technological means for knowing future outcomes, but a social model for extracting and concentrating discretionary power. Prediction is a ‘relational grammar’ that governs this allocation of discretion: the everyday ability to define one's situation. This extractive dynamic extends a long historical pattern, in which new methods for producing knowledge entail a redistribution of decision-making power." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517231171053
There are a lot of useful concepts for this faculty of judgment (phronesis, savoir vivre, discretion, etc). However we choose to frame it, it does seem to be one of the biggest casualties of AI and compulsive internet use, but also one of the most difficult to describe and vouch for -- especially to people who've already lost theirs, or never had much of it to begin with.
The potential for mass dehumanization is reflected in the Effective Altruism debate. Claiming distant 'future beings' (a wholly imaginary concept!) should outweigh actually existing beings in our moral calculus is an astonishing act of hubris and delusion. Which seems to characterize an alarming percentage of Silicon Valley culture.
The problem of AI as a cultural force is insoluble, not because it is algorithmic but because its fundamental structure is based on the sum of all accessible human writings. The structure (billions of weighted connections between words) that the AI employs does not favor Aristotle, Confucius, et al, but a lowest common denominator. Familiarity with the shelves of a comprehensive library or the internet reveals this to be in substantial part amoral, gullible, and above all tasteless -- lacking in judgment. "Training" and "alignment" are supposed to rectify this But, even aside from the fact that these are in the control of the AI owners, some of the worst people on the planet, it is proving impossible to overcome the gravitational pull of the total mass of human writings.
One of my least favorite common cultural tics these days are when people claim that you can't criticize people's taste, on the grounds that taste is completely subjective.
No! What we are talking about is judgment, and it is possible to have a correct or incorrect judgment! It is possible to be *wrong* about artistic or cultural taste!
I think that one of the underappreciated effects of social media, in which everyone is siloed (whether algorithmically or just by virtue of personal preference) into a little bubble that exactly conforms to their desires, is that it has catastrophically weakened the sense of social judgment of taste. And I think that it explains some of the very childlike behavior we see adults exhibiting in public: people cannot conceive that their desires and opinions could possibly be judged. Somehow everyone's own desires have become the "unmarked category."
My understanding of the western enlightenment is the effort to support and produce the faculty of judgment in humans, which is ultimately the exercise of wisdom. From Kant: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! 'Have courage to use your own understanding!' --that is the motto of enlightenment."
So in addition to the crisis of the humanities, and the pressures of AI, I would also add the cultural and epistemic bubbles of social media for impairing our collective sense of judgement.
I think understanding our dependence on the natural world and being gobsmacked by its beauty is part of being human as well. I know this is seemingly separate from the human culture question, but I think its an equally important degradation that makes us lose our minds and humanity as well.
I very much like your point about the value of simply *remembering* things. I suspect your observation about young people (but by no means confined to them) simply boils down to the non-necessity of remembering anything when you can google AI anything for instant utility (and then immediately forget it).
Who knows how to calculate the loss involved when this happens across a society, but among other things it seems very much tied up with surrendering power, autonomy - it’s individual, personal, but also a kind of political process, a re-positioning, a power realignment.
Remembering things is never just remembering things - it’s always remembering them in relation to other things you’ve remembered, which then (good, bad or ugly) become thoughts, connections, sometimes even inadvertent zingers, like the cliche of finding the best books by accident while randomly browsing the shelves.
It’s a modest political achievement of a kind, because unlike AI (the putative “agent” of future decision-making) you are subject to governance, to law, to the jackboot, and the robots are not (in the end, the AI revolution is old wine in new bottles - garden-variety defence contracting, bombing things and people, juicing casino capitalism, disempowering everyone else).
Whatever instrumental usefulness AI may have in certain contexts, to let it do your thinking, remembering, writing, trying to work things out, is to become a powerless drone. Smart money is on this being the whole point.
Aristotle's phronesis is similar to how Bernard Stiegler uses "savoir vivre," or knowledge of how to live. Savoir vivre isn't knowledge in the sense of facts and information; it's an organic faculty of judgment that can't be reduced to a rule or pattern. Stiegler argues that technologies that exteriorize memory (what he calls "mnemotechnologies") degrade savoir vivre, and that we're undergoing something like a savoir vivre extinction event right now, which is part of a broader process of mass proletarianization via tech.
Some academics are writing about this. Sun-Ha Hong's essay "Prediction as Extraction of Discretion" is good: "prediction is not primarily a technological means for knowing future outcomes, but a social model for extracting and concentrating discretionary power. Prediction is a ‘relational grammar’ that governs this allocation of discretion: the everyday ability to define one's situation. This extractive dynamic extends a long historical pattern, in which new methods for producing knowledge entail a redistribution of decision-making power." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517231171053
There are a lot of useful concepts for this faculty of judgment (phronesis, savoir vivre, discretion, etc). However we choose to frame it, it does seem to be one of the biggest casualties of AI and compulsive internet use, but also one of the most difficult to describe and vouch for -- especially to people who've already lost theirs, or never had much of it to begin with.
The potential for mass dehumanization is reflected in the Effective Altruism debate. Claiming distant 'future beings' (a wholly imaginary concept!) should outweigh actually existing beings in our moral calculus is an astonishing act of hubris and delusion. Which seems to characterize an alarming percentage of Silicon Valley culture.
The problem of AI as a cultural force is insoluble, not because it is algorithmic but because its fundamental structure is based on the sum of all accessible human writings. The structure (billions of weighted connections between words) that the AI employs does not favor Aristotle, Confucius, et al, but a lowest common denominator. Familiarity with the shelves of a comprehensive library or the internet reveals this to be in substantial part amoral, gullible, and above all tasteless -- lacking in judgment. "Training" and "alignment" are supposed to rectify this But, even aside from the fact that these are in the control of the AI owners, some of the worst people on the planet, it is proving impossible to overcome the gravitational pull of the total mass of human writings.
One of my least favorite common cultural tics these days are when people claim that you can't criticize people's taste, on the grounds that taste is completely subjective.
No! What we are talking about is judgment, and it is possible to have a correct or incorrect judgment! It is possible to be *wrong* about artistic or cultural taste!
I think that one of the underappreciated effects of social media, in which everyone is siloed (whether algorithmically or just by virtue of personal preference) into a little bubble that exactly conforms to their desires, is that it has catastrophically weakened the sense of social judgment of taste. And I think that it explains some of the very childlike behavior we see adults exhibiting in public: people cannot conceive that their desires and opinions could possibly be judged. Somehow everyone's own desires have become the "unmarked category."
My understanding of the western enlightenment is the effort to support and produce the faculty of judgment in humans, which is ultimately the exercise of wisdom. From Kant: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! 'Have courage to use your own understanding!' --that is the motto of enlightenment."
So in addition to the crisis of the humanities, and the pressures of AI, I would also add the cultural and epistemic bubbles of social media for impairing our collective sense of judgement.
Cheers and thanks for another provocative salvo.
I think understanding our dependence on the natural world and being gobsmacked by its beauty is part of being human as well. I know this is seemingly separate from the human culture question, but I think its an equally important degradation that makes us lose our minds and humanity as well.
I very much like your point about the value of simply *remembering* things. I suspect your observation about young people (but by no means confined to them) simply boils down to the non-necessity of remembering anything when you can google AI anything for instant utility (and then immediately forget it).
Who knows how to calculate the loss involved when this happens across a society, but among other things it seems very much tied up with surrendering power, autonomy - it’s individual, personal, but also a kind of political process, a re-positioning, a power realignment.
Remembering things is never just remembering things - it’s always remembering them in relation to other things you’ve remembered, which then (good, bad or ugly) become thoughts, connections, sometimes even inadvertent zingers, like the cliche of finding the best books by accident while randomly browsing the shelves.
It’s a modest political achievement of a kind, because unlike AI (the putative “agent” of future decision-making) you are subject to governance, to law, to the jackboot, and the robots are not (in the end, the AI revolution is old wine in new bottles - garden-variety defence contracting, bombing things and people, juicing casino capitalism, disempowering everyone else).
Whatever instrumental usefulness AI may have in certain contexts, to let it do your thinking, remembering, writing, trying to work things out, is to become a powerless drone. Smart money is on this being the whole point.