[FRIAM] cults
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed Oct 4 12:06:33 EDT 2023
On 10/4/23 4:36 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> I carefully listened to Musk's speech as provided in the reference and
> attempted to reconcile Marcus's comments with it. Here are my
> observations:
>
> a) Marcus states, "I realized I kind of agree with Musk about the
> benefits of more isolation." However, I interpret Musk's stance
> differently. He appears to be cautioning against excessive global
> unity rather than advocating for more isolation. In Musk's own words,
> "I think we should be a little bit concerned about becoming too much
> of a single world government." To me, this doesn't imply a call for
> greater isolation, but merely warns about a single world government.
> Am I being overly simplistic in my understanding?
>
> b) Marcus suggests, "I believe his advocacy may be aimed at fostering
> chaos." While I may strongly disagree with many of Musk's actions and
> statements, I don't share the belief that he desires chaos. I
> recognize that sometimes one must connect the dots and draw
> conclusions without concrete evidence, so I don't fault Marcus for his
> perspective. However, it's crucial to emphasize that I have not come
> across any evidence supporting the idea that Musk intends to create chaos.
Reading Isaacson's biography of Musk it seems highly credible that Musk
*likes* disruption... that he likes to disrupt his own companies'
technical agendas as well as their staff's tactical styles. Isaacson
gives Musk a lot of tentative but qualified credit for this:
Musk's cowboy effort/demonstration last Xmas break of going into the
Sacramento Data Center and moving (dozens?) of server racks to
Washington State (Tacoma/Seattle) to /demonstrate to the arm of
X/Twitter responsible for such things that their estimates of the effort
and time involved were unreasonably long/, is a good example. The net
effect was, in fact, negative by most measures, but his intention as
described was ultimately to make a point in spite of his face. And
(maybe) it worked. There was definitely an overt *performative
cruelty* or at least *punishing* aspect to this demonstration but it may
have helped to move other sub-projects along much faster than they would
have otherwise. X/Twitter survived the chaos that ensued...
He has done the same many times with Tesla and SpaceX technical
arms/agendas/phases. One *could* say that he doesn't *intend* the
resulting chaos but rather simply "risks it", but my reading is that he
sees the (contained in space and time) as a tool to dislodge *other*
parts of his business ventures from local minima with the *threat* of
disruption. As I remember another anecdote... he pulled a lot of
engineers off of various time-critical SpaceX missions onto a
self-imposed deadline on a less time-critical mission which was very
frustrating to most if not all of the engineers being jerked around, but
after the fact some or even many of the engineers acknowledged that the
forced march on a project not near and dear to them rejuvenated them and
refocused them on their home-turf project. It is at the very least an
injection of "noise" into a gradient-descent algorithm that (sometimes)
helps jog things out of a local minima.
This is not to say that Musk's intentions around projects within his own
domain (empire) apply to his intentions around the global
socio-economic-political system they are embedded in, but it seems
likely to me that he *does* believe that his tactics apply
*everywhere*... I believe/fear his influence is outsize (by multiples
even of the Gilded Age Robber Barons). One can give the likes of
Genghis Khan and Chairman Mao credit for reshaping significant
geopolitical regions profoundly, but that doesn't mean we would support
doing it again if we had the opportunity.
As with my previous ramble about my own life-experience with
individualism/collectivism, I think there is an acute tension between
the agency facilitated by individuation/isolation and
authoritarianism/collectivism. My personal holy grail is to
understand the middle ground where collective action (with wisdom)
emerges from individualism without authoritarianism. Q's motto "Where
We Go One, We Go All" is creepy as hell to me... it is an overt
statement that "collective action" in some way supercedes everything
else. When lead by a cult leader (and Q might not even exist but is
deferred to as if a real individual authority) this kind of deference to
authority is acutely dangerous.
In my last post, I wandered off of Glen's original question or point
about /Fascism/ which I think he meant to emphasize top-down
authoritarianism but perhaps also admits to the (illusion of?) the
bottom up style of /Populism/ which seems to often go hand-in-hand with
Fascism. Musk derives his "power" from a combination of $$ and
Attention, both of which we, the unwashed masses give to him every time
we buy/use one of his products, reX one of his X's, or even say his name
(all Press is Good Press?) out loud (even worse if you do it 3 times in
front of a mirror?). So his "power" derives from our populist support
(advertent or otherwise) but he *wields* it top down through how he
chooses to spend his fortune in $$ and Attention (and Reputation to a
lesser extent).
>
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2023 at 18:23, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> I realized I kind of agree with Musk about the benefits of more
> isolation.
>
> https://twitter.com/i/status/1625732016896458755
>
> However, national boundaries are not the right cutoff. Any
> community or cult is the potential nucleation of a mind virus.
> I expect his advocacy above is about creating chaos so that people
> such as himself are the only ones that have the resources to
> influence governments.
> A particularly virulent mind virus (like white supremacy, or 09A)
> could cross national boundaries and not be impeded by law enforcement.
>
> What does the world look like if P% of the population has broad
> resistance to mind viruses and (100-P)% does not?
> If P is <= 10, maybe better to fan the flames of crazy and let the
> chips fall where they may. Perhaps that is how Musk sees it.
>
> Marcus
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2023 6:37 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: [FRIAM] cults
>
> It's been awhile since I've run across a new-to-me cult. But 09A
> certainly qualifies as a meaty one:
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/new-york-satanic-cult-764-fbi
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2023.2195065
>
> I can't reconcile the apparent contradiction between fascism and
> individuality. I guess the closest some analysts come is to
> suggest that they're only aligning with the fascists, for now, to
> bring about the end of the current aeon and the colonization of
> the galaxy.
>
> I guess it reminds me of the "no enemies to the [right|left]"
> rhetoric:
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/conservative-christopher-rufo-florida-twitter-debate
>
> But otherwise, O9A's ... "beliefs and structure" seem incoherent
> enough to write them off as just too stupid to care about. However
> one author nailed it in saying that there are plenty of both
> impressionable and antisocial people using the internet,
> susceptible to the "sinister" allure, to cause real damage.
>
> --
> glen
>
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