Posts

Economic Nationalism, Nietzsche and AGI, Normativity: My Tenth, Eleventh, and Thirteenth Avalon Exposition Sessions

It's rational, not self-interests clashing, The nation's an economic lever, Enough of free traders' nation-bashing! Let's make our land hard-working and clever. Can your synthetic comrade succeed you? Make you a superman when you are dead? Is it your friend or a way to breed you? I like it better than freezing my head. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Eckhart, Buddha, There's a limit past normativity, One sees it in Li Po and Neruda, With both yin and yang it's in privity. I liked Steve as Nietzsche's synthetic friend, May his words like Friedrich's live past his end.

Translating the Untranslatable: My Twelfth Avalon Exposition Session

God's right. Grasses blight. Rivers dry. Cripples cry. Stealing and lying. Killing and dying. Potties and stenches. Bodies and trenches. Trampled is the Word. Truth is the absurd. Captive is the tsar. Risen is the herd. Marina Tsevtsaeva, 1918. (With Andrew's help).  An accursed year I've seen.

Game Theory, Cybernetics, and the Left: My Second Three Avalon Exposition Sessions

The session on game theory was a fail, I've written two books on it, enough said, Matrix logic felt jejune, cold, and stale, Is my long fascination with it dead? Post-apocalyptic cybernetics? Can Jesus save us from the end of days? Does tech need Christian apologetics? Can there be a Man-God AI obeys? So many years pond'ring What Is The Left, That ancient ask makes matrices seem fresh, Of new insight I find myself bereft, I get no sectual kick from the sesh.   God, cybernetics, Christ's way to stan joy, Today I became a Poulos fanboy.

Darwin, Zhuzi, and Plato: My First Three Avalon Exposition Sessions

Darwin believed in empathy for all, Also in the savage's extinction, True. We moderns want trad folkways to fall, To love all is our mark of distinction. Zhuzi believed in attacking a text, His aggression evokes deconstruction, He and Derrida both find reading vexed, But is it?  Reading's gentle seduction. Plato believed in enthusiasm, Or did he?  What about Phaedrus's horse? 'Tween good and bad desire is a chasm, Reason holds the reins to keep it on course. I'm glad I learned something about Zhuzi, I think of him as a critic, like me. '  

Ali

Ten years ago was my disappearance, I dove down dank rabbit holes of folly, With impulse I brooked no interference, To give me sanity I had Ali. Five years ago a friend had disappeared, The twists in his brain had led him to doom, In my own mind's chamber, madness interfered, Ali was a calm presence in the room. This time, you could say Ali is gone, To a nether realm that's dire and tomby, But I believe there will be a new dawn, For my Layla, my Majnun, my Rumi. Now Ali lies quietly in his room. He's a prophet who will rise from his tomb.

Rawls and Me, by Jurgen Habermas

Rawls and Me Shouldn't I leave off with critical theory? Shouldn't I simply be a liberal like Rawls? I respect there's reason in your query, Even if your American tilt galls. I want you to persuade you that John's like me, Both of us doubly fuse our traditions, Locke, Mill, Kant, Marx, the U.K., Germany-- We've calmed them all with peaceful seditions. In your land, liberal means two diff'rent things, John's theory's split between them, so is mine, My belief in critical theory brings      to the fore a tension.  I think that's fine. You're off to see Axel Honneth tonight? Great, say hello, I think he gets me right.                 

Synthesis, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Synthesis, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The problem in Kant is the one in you, You like logic, so you dichotomize, You confuse your own bent with what is true, All turns into dualism in your eyes. He was wrong about that, and you are, too, Please consider the master and the slave, Up from their dualism, liberty grew, Without synthesis there's only the grave. Chide me if you will for imprecision, Chide me if you will for my Prussian pride, But don't sacrifice truth for concision, Don't confuse your logic with his'try's tide. There's a talk on me in New York tonight? Please help the Americans see the light.