Never Send a Human To Do a Machine's Job

The last few chapters have been somewhat conventional, but this next one -- called Reason's Progeny -- had me repeatedly muttering to myself, The matrix! He's talking about the mechanics of the matrix! On the one hand, it seems simplistic, but on the other hand, there isn't one. I don't know of a better explanation.

One of the most important features of the matrix is that inhabitants don't know they're in it, so no theory is required to explain anything. Certainly it is much easier to see matrices of the past and of other cultures. 

However, another key feature of the progressive matrix is that "all matrices are of equal value," so to speak. In other words, multiculturalism is really "multi-matrixism" or something.

It's a long chapter, so I'm just going to flip away and pause at anything that stands out.

Here's a quote from William James which serves as a good set-up for how matrices are constructed:

The intellectual life of man consists wholly in his substituting a [LH] conceptual order for the [RH] perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.  

Boom: the person starts living in his LH concepts instead of RH experience. As you might expect, this is going to be much more of a problem for so-called intellectuals. It is why most Marxists are on college campuses, and why there are no deconstructionist farmers. Radical movements are always top-down affairs.

Without a doubt one of the weirdest features of the progressive matrix is the obsession with sex -- not only that it is possible to change sexes, but that the state must get involved in the genital mutilation of children. 

I'm a psychologist, and I call this prima facie evidence of madness. But the people who perceive this as mad are the ones punished by the matrix. We're all supposed to pretend we don't see a man pretending to be a woman.

As McGilchrist says, "The abstractions that we create through language seem to be real and are taken up by the unwary for things." 

This would explain the left's ceaseless manipulation of language. I'm thinking in particular of the "euphemistic treadmill," whereby words must constantly be changed as reality and experience catch up to them (e.g., from "disabled" to "differently abled"). 

But sometimes the reverse happens, and the left refuses to change words when the reality has changed. Most notably, they still call themselves "liberal" when they have long since been the opposite. Likewise "diversity," "science is real," "black lives matter," etc.

Much of this comes down to the left hemisphere's incorrigible tendency to make snap judgments about causation, when the RH is much more circumspect and appreciative of nonlinearity, overdetermination, and context. 

For example, we now know that the genome isn't linear at all, in that sometimes many genes contribute to a single trait, while other times a single gene affects many traits. Everything's entangled, much like the cosmos itself (i.e., nonlocality). 

And this is indeed Hayek's main lesson vis-a-vis both economics and culture more generally. This whole post could easily plunge down that rabbit hole. Just read the three volume Law, Legislation and Liberty, one of our foundational tomes (https://www.amazon.com/Law-Legislation-Liberty-statement-principles/dp/0415522293/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1NZ78JUVK55RW&keywords=Hayek+Law+Legislation&qid=1684430590&s=books&sprefix=hayek+law+legislation%2Cstripbooks%2C140&sr=1-4).

On its own the LH is over-eager to infer causation, and will infer a causative relationship even when none clearly exists (McGilchrist).  

Can you say Russia Collusion? How about White Supremacy? J-6 Insurrection? Fine Nazis? 

Note that the matrix has become adept at feeding these narratives of false causation to the masses via the media. Therefore, the people running the matrix are technically outside the matrix. 

It reminds me of an aphorism to the effect that The mob always loses. The mob bosses always win. 

I've said this before in different terms, but some members at the top of the managerial class know it's all bullshit, while the great majority have no idea they're being manipulated. Ask the average journalist about global warming, or gender dysphoria, or corrupt elections, or criminality and race, and she literally knows nothing. 

Another important point about the LH is that it greatly overestimates our ability to predict and control outcomes, which again goes back to complex systems and to Hayek. 

It's why the War On Poverty has been going on for 60 years, with no exit strategy in sight. Or, just hand over more money to teachers, and this will cure our dysfunctional educational system! Or make gas $6 a gallon in California, and the world's temperature will decrease! Can't you feel it?

Perhaps I should emphasize that all of the opinions above are mine. I don't want to get McGilchrist in trouble. But here he sounds just like Thomas Sowell:

The problems for the rational mind begin with defining goals. Aims are complex and not infrequently incommensurable -- even incompatible, if we are entirely honest.

For which reason Sowell emphasizes that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. But the left never tells us what we are trading -- nor do we ever get the thing for which we traded. But the managerial class always ends up with more power over us. It's as if none of us is safe from all this damn progress.

You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.