On pg. 75, Baudrillard gives us one of our prime directives in a fairly direct manner: "Against the true of the true, against the truer than true . . . against the obscenity of obviousness, against this unclean promiscuity with itself that we call resemblance, we must remake illusion, rediscover illusion,t his power, at once immoral maleficent, to tear the same away from the same, called seduction. Seduction against terror: these are the stakes. There are not others." Okay, fine, fighting terror with seduction. Remaking illusion, yadda yadda yadda. I had a failed project at creating an image this morning. The essential idea would have been to layer the natural, the biological, and cartographic on the same plane and then attempt to map out E-waste. I keep on returning to the figure of the map because of the problem's geopolitical implications, something I can't help but identify as one of the primary scenes of the accident. Anyway, my attempt was pretty abortive and resulted in a wasted, albeit fun, half-hour. SO, looking at this page in Fatal Strategies, I find my eyes drawn to another segment that I think can help me clear this up: "Illusion is not false, for it doesn't use false signs; it uses senseless signs, signs that point nowhere. This is why it deceives and disappoints our demand for meaning, but it does so enchantingly." I had the right idea in the beginning, bringing together the natural, the biological, and the cartographic as a means to produce a background not quite recognizable but still resembling...something. Where I messed up was in creating these tokens of the event. These signs point somewhere. We want signs that point to nowhere, senseless signs that can help us squeeze a new logic into the insanity of rational structure. So, I guess I just realized that I should have taken Ulmer's clue earlier and gone for more or less total abstraction sooner rather than later?
Showing posts with label Reason. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reason. Show all posts
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Analyzing the disaster below
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Von Neumann and the Temple of Depense
Three of the crucial concepts in Kantian metaphysics are space, time, and causality. Ulmer's lecture last week holds that the Kantian aesthetic exists somewhere between common sense and decision-making regimes of reason. Or, more appropriately, the aesthetic bridges them. If I recall previous reading on Kant's aesthetic theory, he holds that it also exists alongside and through space,time,causality.
It's causality that I think game theory most applies to. One of the most vital tenets of game theory (or one of its contingencies) is that experience changes one's behavior. For example, if you're in a game of chicken, and you know that your opponent Rosko the Shark has a tendency to drive straight, drink grain alcohol, and tear off his wheel as he speeds toward you, you'll likely swerve. Sure, you didn't prove anything to Rosko, but at least you're not dead.
Your making this decision relies on the givens of our sense of space and time but also on the causality that informs our creation of causality in our striving to understand the givens of the world.
What game theory attempts to do is to rationalize through practical reason how best to alter the state of things to instill a desired causality. So, for example, if one played chess mathematically, one could effect a causality that would dictate the moves (if she moves her knight here, I'll take it with my rook, setting up this move by her, and this move by me, ad nauseum).
The subject of game theory exists to scoop it all up, to maximize personal gain.
This is the figure of a limited economy, not a game economy.
We're trying to find the causality of the gift economy (the sacred) and, I suppose, attempting to figure out how to bring that sacred to the experience of entertainment, the defining function of electracy. We could then use that sacred to promote policy formation. How to strategize this kind of symbolic exchange?
Game theory's based on scientific rationality, a product of literacy (logically, I will do...). Electracy's based on the flesh, on feeling, on affect, pain and pleasure. What will a game theory with these tools look like?
Game theory predicts a subject's behavior or attempts to account for it, but as we noted, it's mostly used to point out what's right in front of us. It demystifies.
Part of Baudrillard's mission is to reinstate mystery, seduction, and the secret. So, I guess our game theory is to figure how digital rhetoric has seduced the subject, figuring out an already existing model, and, understanding those tenets, attempt to use its precepts to effect some kind of shift.
Game theory's inapplicability to human behavior comes from its failure to properly contextualize the subject. As we noted before, the human subject isn't the purely rational figure of game theory.
So, a subtenet of our wanderings may be to properly consider our subject. Is pain, pleasure, etc. still applicable. Do we still function according to affect?
I'm fairly certain we do, but reflection may complicate.
Perhaps.
It's causality that I think game theory most applies to. One of the most vital tenets of game theory (or one of its contingencies) is that experience changes one's behavior. For example, if you're in a game of chicken, and you know that your opponent Rosko the Shark has a tendency to drive straight, drink grain alcohol, and tear off his wheel as he speeds toward you, you'll likely swerve. Sure, you didn't prove anything to Rosko, but at least you're not dead.
Your making this decision relies on the givens of our sense of space and time but also on the causality that informs our creation of causality in our striving to understand the givens of the world.
What game theory attempts to do is to rationalize through practical reason how best to alter the state of things to instill a desired causality. So, for example, if one played chess mathematically, one could effect a causality that would dictate the moves (if she moves her knight here, I'll take it with my rook, setting up this move by her, and this move by me, ad nauseum).
The subject of game theory exists to scoop it all up, to maximize personal gain.
This is the figure of a limited economy, not a game economy.
We're trying to find the causality of the gift economy (the sacred) and, I suppose, attempting to figure out how to bring that sacred to the experience of entertainment, the defining function of electracy. We could then use that sacred to promote policy formation. How to strategize this kind of symbolic exchange?
Game theory's based on scientific rationality, a product of literacy (logically, I will do...). Electracy's based on the flesh, on feeling, on affect, pain and pleasure. What will a game theory with these tools look like?
Game theory predicts a subject's behavior or attempts to account for it, but as we noted, it's mostly used to point out what's right in front of us. It demystifies.
Part of Baudrillard's mission is to reinstate mystery, seduction, and the secret. So, I guess our game theory is to figure how digital rhetoric has seduced the subject, figuring out an already existing model, and, understanding those tenets, attempt to use its precepts to effect some kind of shift.
Game theory's inapplicability to human behavior comes from its failure to properly contextualize the subject. As we noted before, the human subject isn't the purely rational figure of game theory.
So, a subtenet of our wanderings may be to properly consider our subject. Is pain, pleasure, etc. still applicable. Do we still function according to affect?
I'm fairly certain we do, but reflection may complicate.
Perhaps.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Von Neumann and the Raiders of Rationality
While I think that we might pursue the Contrast as something directed more toward Game Theory itself than Poundstone's book, I think a short take on the book's overall logic may yield some insights as to how exactly Game Theory functions in relationship to real-life situation.
That I'm even having to make this distinction points to Poundstone's fundamental take on Game Theory: as something that one can describe in mathematical terms but also as something that, as it relates to real-world and interpersonal situations, constantly bleeds over into personal conflicts which its requirements of pure reason cannot account for.
Poundstone makes it a point several times in the book to emphasize that criticisms of game theory as not accounting for an effect of a real world situation is problematic because game theory doesn't assume imperfect human players (see the discussion on guilt in the dilemma on 223 or the problem of measuring human investment on 171-172), but yet the entire logic of his book rests upon the indeterminacy within game theory between pure reason and human indeterminacy.
So, we frequently get two different kinds of chapters (the division more stated at the beginning of the book and merged a bit by the end): there are numerous chapters simply detailing the material premises and results of the games (chapters 1, 6, and 11 are good examples) while others detail von Neumann's personality and biography or historical accounts (see chapters 2, 7, and the rather heartbreaking 9).
This division in chapters and logic seem counterproductive. If we wanted a strict account of game theory or a straight biography of von Neumann, we might find ourselves disappointed by what seems like info that distracts from one or the other books' provisional main point.
But it seems as though the kind of logic we find here can also be seen abundantly in game theory. For example, one of the dilemmas the book opens with asks us to imagine that we are faced with a clock ticking down an hour, and at the end of the hour, both our mother and our spouse will be killed. We have the option of saving one of them by pressing a button. If we save one, the other dies. If we refuse to press a button, both die. (it just occurred to me that one could probably see a lot of these prisoners' dilemmas in the Saw series).
Poundstone says that one can only decide which of the two he/she likes better and choose accordingly, but the woman/man of reason this advice presumes simply does not exist. The decision is, in most cases I'd presume, impossible to make (a great film might be made with Norman Bates put in this situation...one would assume he'd choose Mother, I guess).
While Poundstone stone-faces it and pretends as though we should accept this precept without a second thought, it indicates what he will later call the ultimate failure of game theory or the prisoner's dilemma to dictate political or economic affairs because rationality has nothing to do with the way human beings actually live. The model is incredibly useful for providing certain explanations regarding biological evolution, but as Lacan tells us, human desire has very little to do with our unthinking biology. To use an example, our body feels hunger, but what we ultimately eat has nothing to do with nutritional value (if it did, nobody would eat McDonald's).
Additionally, the widespread appeal and draw of game theory plays on irrational motivations in order to make decisions. One might map out reasons to save Mom or spouse, but the decision, in the end, would likely not be a rational one (if one's mom or spouse was continually abusive or otherwise unpleasant, that situation might be different). In the end, game theory can't explain these things. The chess example used in chapter 1 is a good one. Von Neumann held that chess isn't really a game to be played at if it were played rationally. One could mathematically produce strategies that would dictate every move, reaction, surprise move, etc. But no one can actually play the game in such a way, so it, like poker, does inevitably depend on intuition and the kinds of things that reason and quantification can't dictate. We can say the same with economics. Von Neumann initially assumed that game theory could dictate military strategy and economic decisions, but game theory remains unable to do simply because these systems have human motivations.
So, I guess if we're dealing with game theory as a contrast, perhaps that's the way we can approach it. Game theory is great at modeling certain relationships between humans, economic forces, etc. but ultimately fails to predict or provide models for human behavior because it's logic and ontology is based on a purely rational, quantifiable regime whereas the kinds of policy formations we seek are based in human irrationality, flesh, etc.
The dichotomy ultimately takes place in the von Neumann biography as well. Poundstone regularly depicts von Neumann as able to perform incredibly complex mathematical equations without effort, like a human calculator (34, 95, 179) but at the same time his quarrels with his wife, his personal affability, and his love of humor seem to play against it. We can also characterize our relationship to computing technologies in a similar fashion. I might produce a digital animation that makes you laugh. It relies on a series of manipulations of binary code but moves beyond it to work on the human register.
That I'm even having to make this distinction points to Poundstone's fundamental take on Game Theory: as something that one can describe in mathematical terms but also as something that, as it relates to real-world and interpersonal situations, constantly bleeds over into personal conflicts which its requirements of pure reason cannot account for.
Poundstone makes it a point several times in the book to emphasize that criticisms of game theory as not accounting for an effect of a real world situation is problematic because game theory doesn't assume imperfect human players (see the discussion on guilt in the dilemma on 223 or the problem of measuring human investment on 171-172), but yet the entire logic of his book rests upon the indeterminacy within game theory between pure reason and human indeterminacy.
So, we frequently get two different kinds of chapters (the division more stated at the beginning of the book and merged a bit by the end): there are numerous chapters simply detailing the material premises and results of the games (chapters 1, 6, and 11 are good examples) while others detail von Neumann's personality and biography or historical accounts (see chapters 2, 7, and the rather heartbreaking 9).
This division in chapters and logic seem counterproductive. If we wanted a strict account of game theory or a straight biography of von Neumann, we might find ourselves disappointed by what seems like info that distracts from one or the other books' provisional main point.
But it seems as though the kind of logic we find here can also be seen abundantly in game theory. For example, one of the dilemmas the book opens with asks us to imagine that we are faced with a clock ticking down an hour, and at the end of the hour, both our mother and our spouse will be killed. We have the option of saving one of them by pressing a button. If we save one, the other dies. If we refuse to press a button, both die. (it just occurred to me that one could probably see a lot of these prisoners' dilemmas in the Saw series).
Poundstone says that one can only decide which of the two he/she likes better and choose accordingly, but the woman/man of reason this advice presumes simply does not exist. The decision is, in most cases I'd presume, impossible to make (a great film might be made with Norman Bates put in this situation...one would assume he'd choose Mother, I guess).
While Poundstone stone-faces it and pretends as though we should accept this precept without a second thought, it indicates what he will later call the ultimate failure of game theory or the prisoner's dilemma to dictate political or economic affairs because rationality has nothing to do with the way human beings actually live. The model is incredibly useful for providing certain explanations regarding biological evolution, but as Lacan tells us, human desire has very little to do with our unthinking biology. To use an example, our body feels hunger, but what we ultimately eat has nothing to do with nutritional value (if it did, nobody would eat McDonald's).
Additionally, the widespread appeal and draw of game theory plays on irrational motivations in order to make decisions. One might map out reasons to save Mom or spouse, but the decision, in the end, would likely not be a rational one (if one's mom or spouse was continually abusive or otherwise unpleasant, that situation might be different). In the end, game theory can't explain these things. The chess example used in chapter 1 is a good one. Von Neumann held that chess isn't really a game to be played at if it were played rationally. One could mathematically produce strategies that would dictate every move, reaction, surprise move, etc. But no one can actually play the game in such a way, so it, like poker, does inevitably depend on intuition and the kinds of things that reason and quantification can't dictate. We can say the same with economics. Von Neumann initially assumed that game theory could dictate military strategy and economic decisions, but game theory remains unable to do simply because these systems have human motivations.
So, I guess if we're dealing with game theory as a contrast, perhaps that's the way we can approach it. Game theory is great at modeling certain relationships between humans, economic forces, etc. but ultimately fails to predict or provide models for human behavior because it's logic and ontology is based on a purely rational, quantifiable regime whereas the kinds of policy formations we seek are based in human irrationality, flesh, etc.
The dichotomy ultimately takes place in the von Neumann biography as well. Poundstone regularly depicts von Neumann as able to perform incredibly complex mathematical equations without effort, like a human calculator (34, 95, 179) but at the same time his quarrels with his wife, his personal affability, and his love of humor seem to play against it. We can also characterize our relationship to computing technologies in a similar fashion. I might produce a digital animation that makes you laugh. It relies on a series of manipulations of binary code but moves beyond it to work on the human register.
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