It is rational to trust your peers or positions of authority, but it is a mistake.
Here is a concise argument for technoCriticism, in four items: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/followup-on-trusting-your-own-judgement/ by @baldur

#validation #AIRisks #science #bias #cognitiveBias #technoCriticism #responsibleAI #tech #techBros #growth #ai #AIRisks

"Modern civilisation has a number of extremely delicate and highly interconnected components whose graceful degradation is effectively impossible."

It is "much easier to break things than to build them up. The government administrations of Britain, France and Germany for example, were set up at a time in the nineteenth century when the rising middle classes demanded a properly functioning state[…]. It took perhaps a generation for professional, neutral public services to fully emerge."

"Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together."

https://braveneweurope.com/aurelien-the-end

#civilService #statehood #bureaucracy #complexity #risk #digitalization #quantification #technocracy #quantitative #repair #mitigation #redundancy #resiliency #Deregulation #Economics #politics #EUPol #EU #Europe #institutions #institutionsDeceive #finance #globalisation #NeoLiberalism #Privatisation #technique #technoCriticism

#Screens "train us in convenience, which is training in predictability, in the facade of certainty. And when that facade inevitably breaks, we often find ourselves at sea.

"In the brilliant and ever-relevant Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott outlines the many ways states fail; principle among them is an obsession with putting things in order, with simplification and efficiency. More often than not, that efficiency translates into brittleness and weakness, into systems so fragile they break the moment something unanticipated arises."

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/make-life-possible

#engineers #engineering #smartphones #iPhone #Android #Culture #development #creation #creatives #art #entertainment #distraction #alienation #screen #technique #tech #technology #technocriticism #phones #mentalHealth #capitalism #statehood #technocracy #fragility #progress

"Humanity has endured for 1 million years for one simple reason: it is bound by limits. It is effectively regulated, and it is this regulation that lies at the heart of its genius.
[…]
"Capital very quickly relied on the sciences, and this was not simply the result of cultural impregnation.

"Classical science separates and analyses. All capital relies on this powerful process and adds to it control through quantification. A principle of devitalisation at the heart of modern technique.

"This thanatocratic principle of capital, without which it is nothing, takes place in three stages: privatisation of the means, industrialisation of devitalisation, and being as a commodity."

Thread in French: https://piaille.fr/@Ciriaco/113083670282268574 by @Ciriaco

#acceleration #convergence #commoditization #commodities #accelerate #criticalTheory #technocriticism #capitalism #technique #tech #BigTech #technology #agriculture #science #supremacy #climateBreakdown #globalHeating #digitalization #engineers #separation #data #climateCollapse

Françoise #Dastur: "We must ask ourselves what constitutes the essence of theoretical science itself. #Heidegger shows in his lecture [of 1919] that the experience of the "thing", of what we call "reality", presupposes the objectification of life and a devitalisation of the living experience, in the sense of an eradication of the interpretation immediately given to the environment. The result of this process of devitalisation and disinterpretation is nothing other than the real in the form of the #data (Gegebenheit) which is in fact a false immediacy, a theoretical construct."

https://journals.openedition.org/noesis/264 @philosophy 🧶

#metaphysics #bigData #requisition #science #epistemology #supremacy #specism #beliefs #believe #technoCriticism #appropriation #seizing #taking #grabbing #grab

"Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. The latter is totally dominated and utilized (in Western society). Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature."

– Jacques Ellul in “Recherche pour une Ethique dans une société technicienne,” Morale et Enseignement, 1983, page 7

#acceleration #convergence #commoditization #commodities #accelerate #criticalTheory #technocriticism #capitalism #technique #tech #BigTech #technology #book #quote #quotes #agriculture

A review of Clia Izoard's book: https://archive.is/r3Def#selection-393.0-393.25

"Locally, the process of radicalization of industrial #mining is detailed through the prism of its social ravages. The mine is above all a gigantic uprooting machine (p. 54), which empties spaces by expropriating the last peoples of the plant. In addition, contemporary mining exposes populations to various diseases and poisoning. In the Bou-Azzer mine in Morocco, we extract responsible cobalt for electric cars; miners and local residents suffer from cancers and neurological and cardiovascular diseases.
"The overall scale of mining sector predation in XXIe century is also outlined through the growing production of waste and pollution. The mining sector is the most polluting industry in the world. For example, an industrial copper mine produces 99.6% waste. Stored near mining pits, the waste rocks, gigantic volumes of extracted rock, generate sulfur releases which drain the heavy metals contained in the rocks and make them migrate towards waterways. Factory pipes constantly spew toxic residues which can, depending on the ore processed, consist of cyanide, acids, hydrocarbons, soda, or known poisons such as lead, arsenic, mercury, etc. Finally, zero-carbon mines are pipe dreams because they are all very energy-intensive. The amount needed to extract, crush, process and refine metals represents approximately 8 to 10% of the total energy consumed worldwide, making the mining industry a major culprit in climate change."

#environment #ecology #mining #mines #extraction #extractivism #metals #transition #energyTransition #ecologicalTransition #ecologicalDebt #lithium #cobalt #digital #digitization #smartphone #iPhone #Android #electric #electricTransition #electricCars #industry #criticalTheory #technoCriticism #capitalism #technology #technique #sovereignty #supply #supplyChain #rawMaterials #commodities #development #exploitation #policy #pollution #NIMBY #CéliaIzoard #nickel #copper #book