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   Enlightenment humanism should be necessarily good: liberal politics,   
   Labour's current mania for austerity, or the interminable   
   justifications for the Iraq war, are often framed as being based on   
   reason and humanism while being anything but. If you've been subject   
   to computer-says-no rules governing your access to the basic   
   necessities of life, then you'll know how easy it is to disguise   
   arbitrary and highly politicised whims as laws of nature, as ironclad   
   as A = π r². The application of rationality and compassion in the   
   real world brings to mind the (likely apocryphal) Ghandi quote about   
   Western civilisation: "I think it would be a good idea."   
      
   The right is a libidinal formation; it is, for many of its   
   proponents, especially those who aren't wealthy enough to materially   
   benefit from it, a structure in which to have fun. A hobby, almost.   
   Sartre's injunction to remember that antisemites are primarily   
   "amusing themselves" [2] is true of most--perhaps all--right wing   
   discourse, no matter how serious it seems or how terrible its   
   real-world effects. As such, the right are strongly averse to any   
   sort of reality-testing. It is, to them, beside the point whether   
   anything they say stands up to the tests developed by the sciences   
   and humanities, including those which determine (insofar as such a   
   determination can be made) whether a piece of art is 'good', or at   
   least serious. When they do invoke objectivity, it is misplaced, and   
   as deeply naïve as their artistic output, premising their objection   
   to the existence of trans people on 'basic biology', when not only   
   can biology not define 'woman', it is having difficulty deciding what   
   a fish or vegetable is. Serious engagement with the world as it   
   is--with the facts that emphatically don't care about your   
   feelings--doesn't often, if ever, yield the simple explanations that   
   the right require. In the face of this complexity, most people will   
   conclude that it is best to be humble: What is a woman? No idea,   
   don't really care, but let's act in a way that causes the least   
   suffering. But the right seem incapable of doing this. Despite all   
   their absurdist posturing, they struggle to come to terms with a   
   contradictory world that does not conform to their pre-decided   
   categories. They want to assert, simultaneously, that unambiguous   
   laws govern all aspects of being, while acting as though 'truth' is   
   whatever they want or need it to be at any given moment.   
      
   Despite all their absurdist posturing, the right struggle to come to   
   terms with a contradictory world that does not conform to their   
   pre-decided categories.   
      
   Gender revanchism is one of the main organising principles of the   
   postmodern right, and much everyday AI usage demonstrates a   
   particularly gendered form of cruelty: deepfake nudes, AI   
   'girlfriends' used as a rhetorical cudgel to show real women that   
   they are being replaced, AI 'art' of Taylor Swift being sexually   
   assaulted. It's no coincidence that the internet's largest directory   
   of deepfakes uses Donald Trump as a mascot. These attitudes are   
   reflected in the upper echelons of the tech and AI industry. OpenAI   
   CEO Sam Altman--the man we are being told is a generational talent, a   
   revolutionary, on a par with Steve Jobs or Bill Gates--is also,   
   allegedly, a rapist and paedophile, who considered his own sister his   
   sexual property since she was three years old, and who responded to   
   allegations by lamenting that "caring for a family member who faces   
   mental health challenges is incredibly difficult." A love of sexual   
   violence is a key part of the identity of the contemporary right, and   
   it is no coincidence that, the further right one goes, the more   
   likely one is to encounter open celebration of rape and,   
   particularly, paedophilia. Altman's legal trouble will, for many on   
   the right, only confirm that he is one of them. Meanwhile, on the Joe   
   Rogan podcast, Mark Zuckerberg described the tech industry as   
   "culturally neutered" and called for more "masculine energy" and   
   "aggression".   
      
   Let's return to Zuckerberg's clothing. It was he that established the   
   ubiquitous 'grey hoodie' style for tech CEOs. But recently he has   
   begun to exhibit a new style. Oversized t-shirts emblazoned with   
   'It's either Zuck or Nothing' in Latin, the unwieldy lines of his   
   Meta AI glasses, a gaudy and unnecessary gold chain. This isn't   
   taking risks with fashion, like Rick Owens or Vivienne Westwood. It's   
   just ugly and stupid. Zuckerberg is also significantly more muscular   
   than he used to be, despite doing nothing in his life that would seem   
   to require a bodybuilder physique. I don't think that it's a   
   coincidence that, as he embraces corporate incelism and AI, he has   
   felt liberated to ignore what does and doesn't look good, choosing   
   instead to display that he is wealthy and powerful enough to look   
   terrible if he wants. All the emperor has to do, when the child   
   laughs at his nudity, is ignore them. Trump's haircut, which we all   
   seem to have become inured to, serves the same purpose. It looks like   
   shit and that's the point. It is a display of power and a small act   
   of cruelty.   
      
   The Cybertruck--itself a work of anti-art that could only be the   
   product of a mind addled by the far right--failed, largely because it   
   is embarrassing to be seen in one.   
      
   AI is a cruel technology. It replaces workers, devours millions of   
   gallons of water, vomits CO2 into the atmosphere, propagandises   
   exclusively for the worst ideologies, and fills the world with more   
   ugliness and stupidity. Cruelty is the central tenet of right wing   
   ideology. It is at the heart of everything they do. They are now   
   quite willing to lose money or their lives in order to make the world   
   a crueller place, and AI is a part of this--a mad rush to make a   
   machine god that will liberate capital from labour for good. (This is   
   no exaggeration: there is a lineage from OpenAI's senior management   
   back to the Lesswrong blog, originator of the concept of Roko's   
   Basilisk.) Moreso even than cryptocurrency, AI is entirely   
   nihilistic, with zero redeeming qualities. It is a blight upon the   
   world, and it will take decades to clear up the mountains of slop it   
   has generated in the past two or three years.   
      
   AI is, unfortunately, a fever that will have to burn itself out. It   
   may be the case that, like cryptocurrency, elites are simply so   
   invested in this technology that, despite its total lack of utility,   
   they will keep trying to make it happen. Given how great a fit it is   
   for them psychologically, I would say that this is more likely to   
   happen than not. However, as we saw in those two brief weeks of last   
   year's US election campaign, the right wing psyche is incredibly   
   fragile. For some reason, they are able to process any inversion of   
   empirical reality, but are acutely sensitive to being laughed at.   
   Calling them weird absolutely works, and telling them their sole   
   artistic output looks like shit also works. Laughing at people who   
   treat AI art as in any way legitimate works. Talking about AI's   
   environmental impact or its implications for the workforce will not   
   work--they like that, it makes them feel dangerous. Instead of   
   talking about taking money from artists, talk about how it makes them   
   look cheap. If hurting and offending people is part of the point,   
   then we can take that fun away from them by refusing to express hurt   
   or offence, even if we feel it.   
      
   Technological progress isn't linear, and it's not wholly   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)